Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas ordered the removal of a monument to the Red Army soldiers who died fighting Nazism in an eastern city today, saying it would deprive Russia of the “opportunity to use the past to disturb the peace.”
The monument, featuring a T-34 tank, was dismantled immediately, with workers removing tributes placed there by residents.
“The operation will be carried out in a dignified manner, with flowers and candles taken to a cemetery, not thrown in the trash,” Interior Minister Lauri Laanemets said.
The caution reflects sensitivities over the monument’s removal in Narva, a city bordering Russia where 85 per cent of the inhabitants are ethnic Russians.
Nearly a quarter of Estonian residents are ethnic Russians and slightly over half of these lack Estonian citizenship, which after independence denied this to descendants of immigrants from elsewhere in the USSR during the Soviet period. Nearly 9 per cent of Estonian residents hold Russian citizenship, seen as a security threat by the country’s leaders.
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