Tag Archives: Kremlin

Flynn to decline U.S. Senate subpoena in Russia probe

National security adviser General Michael Flynn arrives to deliver a statement during the daily briefing at the White House

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Former White House National Security Adviser Michael Flynn will decline to comply with a subpoena from the Senate Intelligence Committee investigating possible Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election, according to media reports on Monday.

Flynn will invoke his Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination, the Associated Press, Wall Street Journal and Fox News reported, citing sources close to Flynn.

The retired lieutenant general, a key witness in the Russia probe, planned to inform the panel of his decision later on Monday, the reports said.

The Senate Intelligence Committee is conducting one of the main congressional probes of alleged Russian meddling in the U.S. presidential election and whether there was any collusion between President Donald Trump’s campaign and Russia.

The committee first requested documents from Flynn in an April 28 letter, but he declined to cooperate with the request.

The U.S. intelligence community concluded in January that Moscow tried to sway the November vote in Trump’s favor. Russia has denied involvement and Trump insists he won fair and square.

Flynn was forced to resign in February, after less than a month on the job, for failing to disclose the content of his talks with Sergei Kislyak, Russia’s ambassador to the United States, and then misleading Vice President Mike Pence about the conversations.

Reuters reported on Thursday that Flynn and other advisers to Trump’s campaign were in contact with Russian officials and others with Kremlin ties in at least 18 calls and emails during the last seven months of the U.S. presidential race. Flynn has acknowledged being a paid consultant to the Turkish government during the campaign.

(Reporting by Doina Chiacu Editing by W Simon and Dan Grebler)

Russia showcases Arctic hardware in Red Square military parade

Moscow - Russia - 09/05/2017 - Russian servicemen march during the parade marking the World War II anniversary in Moscow. REUTERS/Maxim Shemetov

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russia rolled out air defense systems built to operate in sub-zero Arctic conditions on Tuesday as it showcased its military might at a parade on Moscow’s Red Square.

The parade, an annual event commemorating the Soviet Union’s victory over Nazi Germany in World War Two, took place under gray skies as President Vladimir Putin looked on from a platform alongside Soviet war veterans.

The Kremlin has been flexing its military muscle in the hydrocarbon-rich Arctic region, as it vies for dominance with rivals Canada, the United States and Norway.

“Lessons of the past war remind us to be vigilant, and the Armed Forces of Russia are capable of repelling any potential aggression,” Putin told the parade.

“But for an effective battle with terrorism, extremism, neo-Nazism and other threats the whole international community needs to be consolidated. … We are open for such cooperation.”

An aerial show by Russia’s air force, including warplanes that have flown missions to support Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s army, was canceled because of low visibility.

Smaller parades were held in cities across Russia, in Ukraine’s Crimea Peninsula, which Russia annexed three years ago, as well as at Russia’s Hmeimim air base in Syria.

Moldovan President Igor Dodon was the only foreign dignitary to attend the Moscow parade. In prior years, leaders including German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Chinese President Xi Jinping had attended.

Tuesday’s parade was the first time Russia had showcased its Tor-M and Pantsir SA air defense systems, painted in the white and black colors of the country’s Arctic forces.

Also on display were columns of troops, tanks and Russia’s Yars intercontinental ballistic missile system.

Putin said: “The Russian soldier today, as in all times, showing courage and heroism, is ready for any feat, for any sacrifice for the sake of his motherland and people.”

(Reporting by Dmitry Solovyov, Alexander Winning and Denis Dyomkin; editing by Ralph Boulton)

Russia, ahead of planned protest, bans Kremlin critic’s foundation

Former Russian tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky speaks during a Reuters Newsmaker event at Canary Wharf in London, Britain, November 26, 2015. REUTERS/Peter Nicholls

By Polina Devitt and Andrew Osborn

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russia said on Wednesday it had banned a pro-democracy movement founded by Kremlin critic Mikhail Khodorkovsky which has called for big anti-government protests on Saturday ahead of a presidential election next year.

In a statement, the General Prosecutor’s Office said it had decided that the activity of the Open Russia foundation, which it called a British organization, was “undesirable” in Russia.

The ban comes days before what Open Russia hopes will be large anti-government protests it has called to try to put pressure on Putin, who is expected to run for what would be a fourth presidential term next year, to leave politics.

Khodorkovsky, a prominent Kremlin critic, said in a social media posting that prosecutors had acted because they were “touched to the quick” by the planned rallies.

The authorities regard any demonstrations not sanctioned in advance as illegal and were taken aback by the scale of large anti-corruption protests last month.

Along with Khodorkovsky’s foundation, the Prosecutor’s Office said it was also banning the Institute of Modern Russia, which it said was a U.S. organization, and the Open Russia Civic Movement, which it said was British.

“These organizations are carrying out special programs and projects on the territory of the Russian Federation aimed at discrediting the upcoming election results in Russia and having them declared illegitimate,” it said.

“Their activity is aimed at inciting protest actions and destabilizing the domestic political situation, which poses a threat to the foundations of the constitutional system and state security.”

Under a 2015 law, organizations deemed “undesirable” can be banned and their members can be fined or jailed for up to six years for ignoring the ban.

Putin freed Khodorkovsky, once Russia’s richest man, in 2013 after he had spent a decade in jail for fraud, a charge Khodorkovsky said had been fabricated to punish him for funding political opposition to Putin. The president has said he regards the businessman as a common thief.

“Russian authorities have worked relentlessly for many years to create the most hostile environment for civil society possible,” Sergei Nikitin, the head of Amnesty International’s Russian branch, said in a statement.

“Open Russia’s activity was a huge obstacle for them, be it defending human rights, supporting independent candidates in elections at different levels, and acting as a media outlet. By banning this organization, they think they’ve overcome this obstacle.”

(Editing by Andrew Roche)

U.S. officials say Russian inaction enabled Syria chemical attack

A civil defence member breathes through an oxygen mask, after what rescue workers described as a suspected gas attack in the town of Khan Sheikhoun in rebel-held Idlib, Syria April 4, 2017.

By Sarah N. Lynch

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Trump administration officials on Sunday blamed Russian inaction for enabling a deadly poison gas attack against Syrian civilians last week as Secretary of State Rex Tillerson prepared to explain to Moscow a U.S. retaliatory missile strike.

Tillerson said Syria was able to execute the attack, which killed scores of people, because Moscow had failed to carry out a 2013 agreement to secure and destroy chemical weapons in Syria.

White House National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster said Syria’s “sponsors,” Russia and Iran, were enabling President Bashar al-Assad’s “campaign of mass murder against his own civilians.”

But Tillerson, who is expected to visit Moscow on Wednesday for talks with Russian officials, said on ABC’s ‘This Week’ program there was “no change” to the U.S. military posture toward Syria.

“I think the real failure here has been Russia’s failure to live up to its commitments under the chemical weapons agreements that were entered into in 2013,” Tillerson said.

“The failure related to the recent strike and the recent terrible chemical weapons attack in large measure is a failure on Russia’s part to achieve its commitment to the international community,” he added.

U.S. President Donald Trump ordered cruise missile strikes on a Syrian air base after he blamed Assad for the chemical attack, which killed at least 70 people, many of them children, in the Syrian town of Khan Sheikhoun. The Syrian government has denied it was behind the attack.

Speaking on “Fox News Sunday,” McMaster said the United States would take further action in Syria if necessary.

“We’re prepared to do more. In fact, we were prepared to do more two days ago,” McMaster said. “The president will make whatever decision he thinks is in the best interests of the American people.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Iran’s Hassan Rouhani said in a phone call that aggressive U.S. actions against Syria were not permissible and violated international law, the Kremlin said.

McMaster said Russian leaders were supporting “a murderous regime” and their actions would dictate the future of U.S.-Russian relations.

“Do they want it to be a relationship of competition and potential conflict,” McMaster said. “Or do they want it to be a relationship in which we can find areas of cooperation that are in our mutual interest?”

Tillerson stopped short of accusing Russia of direct involvement in planning or carrying out the attack, saying he had not seen “any hard evidence” to suggest Moscow was an accomplice to Assad.

But he said the United States expected Russia to take a tougher stance by rethinking its alliance with Assad because “every time one of these horrific attacks occurs, it draws Russia closer into some level of responsibility.”

(Reporting by Sarah N. Lynch and David Morgan; Editing by James Dalgleish)

Russia blocks access to Internet pages promoting new Moscow protest

FILE PHOTO: Riot police officers detain an opposition supporter during a rally in Moscow, Russia March 26, 2017. REUTERS/Maxim Shemetov/File Photo

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russia has blocked access to several Internet pages promoting what the authorities say is a planned illegal anti-government protest in or near Moscow’s Red Square on Sunday.

The planned demonstration would take place a year before a presidential election and a week after the biggest anti-government protests in years ended in hundreds of arrests, including that of opposition leader Alexei Navalny.

Sunday’s organizers describe themselves online as “young people and ordinary students from Moscow” and say they have nothing to do with Navalny, who is serving out a 15-day jail sentence for his role organizing the March 26 protests.

As of Friday afternoon, around 2,000 people had signed up online to attend the student protest, which in the authorities’ eyes is illegal because its organizers did not seek permission beforehand or agree the venue and timing with them.

A copy of what appeared to be an authentic letter from the prosecutor general’s office to the country’s communications regulator, Roskomnadzor, was leaked online on Friday asking for access to five Internet pages to be blocked, saying they amounted to calls for “mass disorder” and “extremist activity”.

Three of those five pages were blocked on Friday afternoon.

The prosecutor general’s office was not immediately available for comment, but its press service confirmed to the TASS news agency it had asked for access to several pages to be blocked because they were advocating illegal protests in Moscow and “in large cities” on April 2.

Roskomdadzor was not immediately available to comment.

President Vladimir Putin, who is expected to run for what would be a fourth term next year, spoke out against the protests on Thursday, saying that anyone who broke the law should be punished.

(Reporting by Andrew Osborn and Maria Tsvetkova; Editing by Jack Stubbs)

Face of anti-Kremlin protests is the son of a Putin ally

A riot police officer climbs on a lamp pole to detain opposition supporters during a rally in Moscow, Russia March 26, 2017. REUTERS/Sergei Karpukhin

By Maria Tsvetkova and Maria Vasilyeva

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russian high school student Roman Shingarkin had some explaining to do when he got home after becoming one of the faces of anti-Kremlin protests at the weekend. His father is a former member of parliament who supports President Vladimir Putin.

At the height of a protest in Moscow on Sunday against what organizers said was official corruption, 17-year-old Shingarkin and another young man climbed onto the top of a lamp-post in the city’s Pushkin Square.

Hundreds of protesters in the square cheered and whistled as a police officer, dressed in riot gear, shinned up the lamp-post and remonstrated with the two to come down. They refused, and the police officer retreated, to jubilation from the protesters down below.

As images of the protests, the biggest in Russia for several years, ricocheted around social media, Shingarkin’s sit-in on top of the lamp-post was adopted by Kremlin opponents as a David-and-Goliath style symbol of defiance.

Shingarkin was eventually detained when, after the protest in Pushkin Square had dispersed, police persuaded him to climb down. He was taken to a police station but as a minor, he could not be charged. From the police station, he had to ring his father to ask to be picked up.

His father, Maxim Shingarkin, was from 2011 until 2016 a lawmaker in the State Duma, or lower house of parliament. He was a member of the LDPR party, a nationalist group that on nearly all major issues backs Putin.

Putin last year gave the party’s leader, Vladimir Zhirinovsky, a medal for services to Russia. With Putin standing next to him, Zhirinovsky proclaimed: “God protect the tsar.”

Shingarkin had not told his father he would be going to the protest, but the former lawmaker quickly guessed what had happened.

“When I rang my dad from the police station, he immediately understood why I was there,” Shingarkin, wearing the same blue and black coat he had on during the protest, said in an interview with Reuters TV.

“I went there (to the rally) out of interest to see how strong the opposition is, how many people would take to the streets, and at the same time to get a response from authorities to a clear fact of corruption.”

He decided to climb up the lamp-post because he “could see nothing from the ground”.

Contacted by telephone on Wednesday, Shingarkin senior said he was sympathetic with his son’s motives for attending the protest.

“He has a social position, against corruption, I support it completely,” Maxim Shingarkin said.

But he emphasized that his son’s actions did not mean that he or the family were opponents of Putin.

The Russian leader, Shingarkin senior said, is popular among voters and there is no one to replace him, but he is let down by the officials around him.

Roman Shingarkin said for now he would not attend any more protests unless they were approved by the authorities.

He said he might venture to a non-approved demonstration once he turns 18, because if he gets into trouble then, the police will charge him and not involve his parents.

(Writing by Maria Tsvetkova and Christian Lowe; Editing by Angus MacSwan)

Generation born under Putin finds its voice in Russian protests

FILE PHOTO: Riot police officers detain an opposition supporter during a rally in Moscow, Russia March 26, 2017. REUTERS/Maxim Shemetov/File Photo

By Denis Pinchuk and Svetlana Reiter

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Protests across Russia on Sunday marked the coming of age of a new adversary for the Kremlin: a generation of young people driven not by the need for stability that preoccupies their parents but by a yearning for change.

Thousands of people took to the streets across Russia, with hundreds arrested. Many were teenagers who cannot remember a time before Vladimir Putin took power 17 years ago.

“I’ve lived all my life under Putin,” said Matvei, a 17-year-old from Moscow, who said he came close to being detained at the protest on Sunday, but managed to run from the police.

“We need to move forward, not constantly refer to the past.”

A year before Putin is expected to seek a fourth term, the protests were the biggest since the last presidential election in 2012.

The driving force behind the protests was Alexei Navalny, a 40-year-old anti-corruption campaigner who uses the Internet to spread his message, bypassing the state-controlled television stations where nearly all older Russians get their news.

“None of my peers watches television and they don’t trust it,” said Maxim, an 18-year-old from St Petersburg who took part in a protest there.

He said messages about the demonstration were shared among his friends via a group chat on a messaging app: “Half the group went to the demonstration.”

Navalny, who was arrested at one of Sunday’s protests, tailors his message for YouTube and VKontakte, the Russian equivalent of Facebook.

One of his recent videos, a 50 minute expose accusing Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev of secretly owning an archipelago of luxury homes, has been watched more than 14 million times on YouTube. Medvedev’s spokeswoman called the allegations “propagandistic attacks” unworthy of detailed comment and said they amounted to pre-election posturing by Navalny.

While older Russians may have turned a blind eye to official corruption during years when living standards improved, younger Russians speak of it in terms of moral outrage.

“Why do I believe that what is happening right now is wrong? Because when I was little, my mum read fairy tales to me, and they said you should not steal, you should not lie, you should not kill,” said Katya, a 17-year-old who was at the protest in Moscow. “What I see happening now, you should not do,” she said.

Like other students who spoke to Reuters at the demonstrations, Katya, Maxim and Matvei asked that their surnames not be published to avoid repercussions.

SOCIAL CONTRACT

Young people actively seeking change represent a new challenge for the Kremlin. It has built and maintained support for Putin for years by focusing mainly on ensuring stability, which Russians sought after the chaos of the immediate post-Soviet years.

Putin came to power after the 1990s, when the Soviet Union disintegrated and millions found themselves destitute. But young people who do not remember those times have different priorities than those even a few years older, said Yekaterina Schulmann, a political analyst.

“Our political regime is fixated on what it calls stability, that is a lack of change,” she said. “The political machine believes the best offer it can make to society is ‘Let’s keep everything the way it is for as long as possible’.”

“Young people need a model of the future, clear prospects, rules of the game which they recognize as fair, and … a social leg-up. Not only do they not see any of that, no one is even talking about it,” said Schulmann.

According to user data compiled from a social media page for people who said they planned to attend Sunday’s protest in St Petersburg, more than one in six were aged under 21.

It is still too early to say whether the new phenomenon will emerge as a serious challenge to Putin’s rule. It could be a burst of youthful idealism that fizzles out.

In any case, opinion polls show that Putin will win comfortably if, as most people expect, he runs for president next year.

His most serious rival for the presidency, Navalny, trails far behind in polls and could be barred from running because of an old criminal conviction which he says is political.

Still, the involvement of so many young people has forced the Russian authorities to pay attention.

A Kremlin spokesman said youngsters had been offered money by protest organizers to show up. The Kremlin offered no evidence to support this allegation, and none of the young people who spoke to Reuters said they had been offered payment.

Several students said school and university authorities had warned them before the protests they could be punished for taking part.

Pavel, a 20-year-old studying to be a veterinarian who attended a protest in Moscow, said it was worth it to risk some of Russia’s stability in the hope of change.

“Yes, maybe it will be negative; yes, maybe there won’t be the stability that we have now. But for a person in the 21st century it’s shameful to live in the kind of stability we have now.”

(Additional reporting by Natalia Shurmina in Yekaterinburg, Russia; Writing by Christian Lowe; Editing by Peter Graff)

Kremlin rejects U.S., EU calls to free detained opposition protesters

A law enforcement officer climbs on a lamp pole to detain opposition supporters during a rally in Moscow. REUTERS/Sergei

By Andrew Osborn

MOSCOW (Reuters) – The Kremlin on Monday rejected calls by the United States and the European Union to release opposition protesters detained during what it said were illegal demonstrations the previous day and accused organizers of paying teenagers to attend.

The protests, estimated to be the biggest since a wave of anti-Kremlin demonstrations in 2011/2012, come a year before a presidential election that Vladimir Putin is expected to contest, running for what would be a fourth term.

Police officers detain an opposition supporter during a rally in Vladivostok.

Police officers detain an opposition supporter during a rally in Vladivostok. REUTERS/Yuri Maltsev

Police detained hundreds of protesters across Russia on Sunday, including opposition leader Alexei Navalny, after thousands took to the streets to demonstrate against corruption and demand the resignation of Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev.

Medvedev’s spokeswoman has called corruption allegations against him “propagandistic attacks,” saying they amount to pre-election posturing by Navalny, who hopes to run against Putin next year.

Opinion polls suggest the liberal opposition, which Navalny represents, has little chance of fielding a candidate capable of unseating Putin, who enjoys high ratings. But Navalny and his supporters hope to channel public discontent over official corruption to attract more support.

The United States and the European Union both issued statements calling on Russia to free detained protesters, but Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Monday such calls were wide of the mark.

“We can’t agree with these calls,” Peskov told reporters on a conference call, saying the police had been professional and properly enforced Russian law.

He said the Kremlin had no problem with people expressing their opinions at protest meetings, but said the timing and location of such events had to be agreed with the authorities in advance, something which he said had not been done in large part on Sunday.

The authorities are concerned opposition activists will try to encourage people to break the law again in future, he said.

Law enforcement officers detain an opposition supporter during a rally in Moscow.

Law enforcement officers detain an opposition supporter during a rally in Moscow. REUTERS/Sergei Karpukhin

“We can’t respect people who deliberately misled minors — in essence children — calling on them to take part in illegal actions in unsanctioned places and offering them certain rewards to do so, thus putting their lives at risk,” said Peskov.

“What we saw yesterday in certain places, and especially in Moscow, was a provocation.”

He said police had gathered factual evidence that some teenagers, who had been detained, had been paid cash by protest organizers to attend.

The Kremlin would listen to what people who took part in other sanctioned anti-government protests in some Russian cities had said on Sunday, Peskov promised.

(Reporting by Andrew Osborn/Maria Kiselyova; Editing by Kevin O’Flynn)

Germany’s Gabriel, in Moscow, warns of risk of new arms race

German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel attends a news conference after a meeting with his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov in Moscow, Russia, March 9, 2017. REUTERS/Sergei Karpukhin

By Sabine Siebold

MOSCOW (Reuters) – German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel on Thursday warned about the danger of a new arms race spiral with Russia and called on all sides to work to end the violence in eastern Ukraine as a first step towards broader disarmament efforts.

Gabriel used his first visit to Moscow as foreign minister to underscore his concerns about both Russia’s military buildup in the Baltic region and its western borders, as well as debate in Washington about “exorbitant military spending increases.”

Speaking to reporters after a meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, Gabriel said they both agreed to continue four-way efforts by Germany, France, Russia and Ukraine to implement the Minsk peace process for Ukraine.

He said both sides in the conflict needed to implement measures already agreed, such as the withdrawal of heavy equipment from the line of conflict.

The conflict between Ukrainian forces and Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine, which has already killed 10,000 people, has heated up in recent weeks.

Gabriel is a member of the Social Democrats, junior partners in Chancellor Angela Merkel’s ruling coalition and historic advocates of dialogue with Russia. But he said Moscow’s violation of sovereign borders in the middle of Europe was unacceptable, a reference to its 2014 annexation of Crimea.

Gabriel did not address Russia’s stationing of ballistic nuclear-capable missiles in Kaliningrad during the joint news conference with Lavrov. But he told Russian news agency Interfax on Wednesday that any move by Moscow to make that deployment permanent would be “a blow to European security.”

Some modifications of the Iskander-M missiles can hit targets 700 km (450 miles) away, putting Berlin within range of Kaliningrad.

“We urgently need new initiatives for peace and security,” Gabriel said on Thursday, adding that strategic and conventional disarmament remained a central tenet of German foreign policy.

“My concern is, given some debate on both sides, the large number of armed troops … in the Baltic states and Poland, and the debate in the United State about exorbitant increases in defense spending, that we are once again facing the danger of a new arms race spiral,” Gabriel said.

He said a military buildup like the one seen in the 1970s and 1980s was not in the interest of the people, noting that Russia, above all, should understand that lesson.

The German foreign minister said Germany had no knowledge about reported CIA hacking attacks carried out from the U.S. consulate in Germany. He added that Germany took any kind of influence operations aimed at affecting public opinion very seriously, regardless of their origin.

(Reporting by Sabine Siebold; Writing by Andrea Shalal; Editing by Madeline Chambers)

Wary of divided loyalties, a Baltic state reaches out to its Russians

An Estonian army conscript soldiers attend a tactical training in the military training field near Tapa, Estonia February 16, 2017. REUTERS/Ints Kalnins

By Alistair Scrutton and David Mardiste

NARVA, Estonia (Reuters) – It is a sign of the times in Estonia, a Baltic state always suspicious of the Kremlin’s ambitions in the region, that Prime Minister Juri Ratas is learning Russian.

Worried that divided loyalties in its largely Russian-speaking border areas could lay Estonia open to conflicts like those in eastern Ukraine and Crimea, Estonia wants to better integrate its Russian speaking minority.

Estonia and the other Baltic nations look at Russia’s actions in Ukraine and fear they could easily be overrun by their huge neighbor. By reaching out to his country’s Russian-speakers, Ratas is hoping to bolster national unity and remove a possible pretext for Russian intervention.

So while Ratas is taking language lessons, his new government is trying to make it easier for Russian speakers to obtain Estonian citizenship and to improve the border region’s economy, where unemployment is high.

Out of a population of 1.3 million in the euro zone and NATO member, about quarter are Russian speakers. Most of those have Russian passports or do not have any citizenship.

For a graphic on Russians in Estonia, click http://tmsnrt.rs/2meQVUw

Some security analysts say any grievance amongst Russian speakers that they feel they are “second-class citizens” could give the Kremlin a pretext to intervene.

Worried since Russia’s 2014 seizure of Crimea that Moscow could invade Poland or the Baltic states, NATO is bolstering its eastern flank with troops and equipment.

But a perception that U.S. President Donald Trump may prove soft on the Kremlin, combined with fears about “fake news” stirring tensions as NATO troops arrive, has caused concern among the Baltic nations of Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia.

Latvia and Estonia have large Russian-speaking populations, the result of migration when they were under Soviet rule. But only in Estonia has a party with a Russian-speaking electoral base come to power in a ruling coalition.

Minister of Health and Labour Jevgeni Ossinovski, a native Russian-speaker and the leader of the Social Democrats, a coalition government member, said reaching out to Russian-speakers was necessary given the tense geopolitical situation.

“We have always understood that big mistakes have big consequences,” Ossinovski told Reuters. “Probably for the next years, so for the foreseeable future, this will be more visible.”

It will not be an easy task. Many Russian speakers rely on Moscow-backed television stations, which Estonia says broadcast Kremlin propaganda.

Some in Estonia fear the arrival of around 1,000 NATO troops will inflame tensions. President Vladimir Putin said in 2014 that the presence of Russians in Estonia gives Moscow the right to intervene with force.

Earlier this month, NATO accused Russia of being behind a false report of a rape by German soldiers in Lithuania intended to undermine support for the troops, and said the alliance expected more of this kind of propaganda.

Estonia remembers 2007, when a decision to move a statue of a World War Two Soviet soldier sparked violent protests by Russian speakers and a wave of cyber attacks widely believed among Estonians to have come from Moscow.

Fear of occupation runs deep in the Baltics, annexed by the Soviet Union under Stalin’s secret 1939 pact with Hitler, overrun by the Nazis during World War Two and then recaptured by the Red Army and held until the Soviet Union fell in 1991. Russian troops left Estonia only in 1994.

After Estonia won independence in 1991, citizenship was granted to those who were citizens before the Soviet occupation regardless of ethnicity. But many Russian speakers who had migrated to Estonia after the war had to take language and history tests. Many people instead opted to have no citizenship or get a Russian passport.

ON THE BORDER

Narva is separated from Russia by a river. Nine out of ten people in the town speak Russian. On the Russian side, locals sit on foldable chairs ice fishing.

At a new border control building, people had passports with different colors – red Russian passports and gray passports for people without citizenship.

At a college on the Estonian side a short walk away, 23-year-old Denis Larchenko talks about arguments with his father.

“One day he is feeling himself Estonian, like after I am talking with him about the Estonians,” Larchenko said. “The next day he will start to watch some TV shows from Russia and he is like, every time feeling that Putin is great.”

In Narva, there are hopes of greater political integration. Until the election of Ratas as leader of the Centre Party, most other Estonian parties were unwilling to work with it because of its alleged links to Moscow.

“We are at least starting to see a change,” said Narva’s deputy mayor, Vyacheslav Konovalov. “Before, it was all just talk and no action.”

Konovalov said the government planned to open a college in Narva and build an exhibition center at a former military base. But the city can be touchy. Attempts to force taxi drivers to improve their Estonian met stiff opposition from the cabbies.

A younger generation of Russian speakers may already be more closely integrated with the Estonian majority, more concerned about access to European jobs than nostalgia for Mother Russia.

“They think that they are Russians and they think Putin is the king, but at the same time they would not like to join with him,” Larchenko said.

Larchenko has studied in Canada. Many of his friends are heading West, to the Estonian capital Tallinn and beyond.

“We still lose about 1,000 people every year from Narva,” said Konovalov. “Usually they don’t come back.”

Conscription has also helped integration. When Capt. Vladimir Kuznetsov, a 34-year-old Russian speaker, first joined the military, he did not know the Estonian word for “Attention!” to warn his barrack mates that an NCO had entered the room. Now he is a volunteer officer speaking fluent Estonian.

Aet Kiisla, a lecturer in public administration in Narva, says most Russian speakers are loyal to Estonia, but suspicious of governments. It may be enough for the Kremlin to act.

“Right now it isn’t a problem, but we have to be realistic. If Russia would turn on all the propaganda methods and tools then it is possible,” Kiisla said.

(Editing by Giles Elgood)