The war in Ukraine has raised worries about the news sources of the Estonian Russian-speaking population, said Dmitri Terepik, the Head of the Estonian International Centre for Defense Research, to the Finnish media.
Approximately 30% of the Estonian population is Russian-speaking. At the end of February, a survey ordered by the Government showed that 37% of Russian-speaking people follow Kremlin news channels as the primary information source. By the end of March, the number had fallen to 19%. The Government has taken measures to better the situation. In the spring of this year, many Russian tv channels were banned in Estonia. Also, the emphasis on reflecting Estonian news in Russian has helped raise awareness among the Russian-speaking communities. "For many, the large-scale attack on Ukraine has been a wake-up call. They have now seen what Russia is capable of. I guess they understood that it's not just about geopolitics or language, but about human dignity," Terepik adds. He also mentions that after the TV channels ban, a small group of Russian speakers evaded it by watching channels on the Internet or installing satellite dishes on their roofs. "Media consumption habits do not change quickly."