Ilves: "No one in Europe thinks Estonians are Nazis"

Cautions to stay out of propaganda war with Russia

Estonia’s President Toomas Hendrik Ilves said in an interview in Eesti Päevaleht that Estonia should not overreact to the constant provocations coming from Russia.

“Some KGB workers suffering from inferiority complexes have invented what they think is a very clever trick of badmouthing us; but in reality, it does not work,” said Ilves. “No one in Europe thinks that Estonians are Nazis.”

Ilves noted that the social problems of people living in Russia are much bigger than the problems of Russians living in Estonia. In order to draw attention away from their own problems, a figure of an enemy in the form of Estonia or Latvia must be found, he said.

“We here in Estonia should not take these statements seriously but should take them as a sorts of inevitable phenomenon that is characteristic of a state that cannot cope with its own problems,” Ilves said.