Russia announced on Monday that it was expelling Estonia’s ambassador, condemning Tallinn’s “total Russophobia” after the Baltic country asked it to reduce its diplomatic presence on its territory, Reuters and Agerpres reported.

“The ambassador of the Republic of Estonia must leave Russia on February 7, 2023,” said the message of the Russian Foreign Ministry, which lowered the level of diplomatic relations to those responsible for business.

The Russian Foreign Ministry added that this measure is a reaction to Estonia’s decision to reduce the number of employees of the Russian embassy in Tallinn.

“In recent years, the leadership of Estonia deliberately destroyed the entire range of relations with Russia. Total Russophobia, the cultivation of enmity towards our country by Tallinn has been reduced to the rank of state policy,” the press release states.

The move, announced by Moscow on Monday, comes after Estonia’s foreign ministry notified the Russian ambassador on January 11 of the need to reduce the number of Russian diplomats to eight by February 1.

“The purpose of the decision is to achieve parity in the number of embassies’ employees, that is, the number of positions in the representative offices of Russia and Estonia in the capitals of the countries will be the same,” the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Tallinn said in a statement. press release

Estonia says that Russia does not maintain diplomatic relations

The Minister of Foreign Affairs of Estonia, Urmas Reinsalu, said at the time that in view of the war in Ukraine, the Russian embassy does not contribute to the development of relations between Tallinn and Moscow, and therefore there is “no reason” for the embassy to work in its current composition.

The three Baltic states – Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania – are among the NATO members who are strongly demanding that Germany supply Ukraine with its Leopard tanks to support Kyiv in the face of a Russian invasion.

Last week, Estonia joined Ukraine’s other allies in sending additional weapons to Ukraine.

Commenting on the reduction of diplomatic relations, the press secretary of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Maria Zakharova, said that “the Estonian regime got what it deserved.”

At the beginning of this year, the government of Tallinn allocated almost a million euros for the dismantling of all the remains of Soviet monuments on its territory, as did other Baltic countries and Poland.

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