Moscow Hopes Estonia to Condemn Nationalists' Threats Regarding Sputnik News

MOSCOW (Sputnik) — On Thursday, the Estonia’s Right Sector and the Estonian Independence Party sent a letter to the Estonian office of the Sputnik news agency threatening to obstruct its work. According to head of Sputnik Estonia news website Yelena Cherysheva, this letter could be sent to another Russia's mass media offices in the country, as a number of television channels are also mentioned there.

"We expect that the authorities of Estonia, which is an OSCE member state, will defend freedom of expression and freedom of mass media. We can hope that these threats will only remain verbal and that the authorities will condemn such actions. Our principal position is that there should be no discrimination, including in relation to the Russian mass media," Dolgov said.

On Wednesday, the Estonian Public Broadcasting company cited a deputy chairman of the Pro Patria and Res Publica Union (IRL) in Tallinn, who said earlier that the center-right party had asked the government to bar Russian channels from airing in the country.

Sputnik Estonia journalists have repeatedly faced discrimination although the international organization Reporters Without Borders ranking Estonia 14th out of 180 countries for freedom of speech observance.

In March, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that it was necessary to pay more attention to such issues as neo-Nazism, aggressive nationalism, ethnic and religious intolerance, particularly in the Baltic countries.