No, it actually doesn’t.
it’s facing a campaign tryinc go incite Russian-language separatism. But just like in Ukraine in 2014, they’ll need to bring actualy Russians from the Russia to do the actual “separatism”.
And it’s incredibly saddening that still in year 2026 DW calls the Russian troops “separatists”. Were the German soldiers in 1939 Belgian separatists in DW’s opinion?
The article refers to separatist Russian speaking Estonians, not to Russian nationals.
…just like articles in 2014 referred to separatist Russian speaking Ukrainians. And still, in reality they were people who had come from the territory of the Russia for the specific purpose of leading “separatism”.
The Russia says they are separatists. In 2014 DW believed the Russia and in 2026 they seem to believing the Russia again.
Okay, I do believe that there are some pensioners that grew up in Soviet times and really want the city to cede to the Russia, but even most of Narva’s Russian-speaking pensioners are strongly against that. Still, a hundred pensioners are (hopefully) not what this article’s headline is talking about, as that would be intentional misleading. This article’s headline is much more likely to be talking about the people who have come from the Russia in order to function as a pretext for the Russian troops to invade Estonia. But in 2014 DW called those people “East-Ukrainian separatists”, so it’s not suprising they might be doing the same again.Also, the video clearly shows Russian-speaking people telling – in Russian language – that the idea of such separatism is ridiculous. They would not say that if they knew even one Russian-speaker who has separatist thoughts.
There is no reason to believe this is any different from what took place in 2014.
As I commented in a different thread: Despite the origin being in memes and generally unserious content, and this being a fringe group which few have heard of, the sentiment of potentially creating a place for those who are considered Russian enough to be excluded/segregated from Estonian society, but also do not want to be part of Russia, is understandable.
Nevertheless, a new state is probably never going to be a serious possibility, nor should it be. Estonians still have a way to go in regards to segregation of Russian-Estonians however… I know someone who is Estonian, but had to change their name to mitigate the amount of prejudice they were exposed to, as the name was Russian in origin.
