IVAN vs JAAN

Well, look who is back

2011-11-11T03:07:00.000-08:00

Isn't it our "friend", former Estonia-critic Lars Christensen giving interview to Postimees' economy news section? Lars Christensen: Euroopa saatus sõltub suuresti USA Keskpanga otsustest (28)11.11.2011 08:40 This is my question: Could you explain what happened to Estonian currency devaluation, which you have so well predicted back in the days, on absurdity of which this blog had commented a

Latynina: Estonia taught Russia a lesson

2008-02-25T03:02:00.001-08:00

Julia Latynina (Wiki), the leading opposition opinion-writer (after Ms Politkovskaya, assassinated) published a piece about the results of pro-Kremlin movement's Nashi anti-Estonian campaign (http://www.gazeta.ru/):"Разновидность Новости Без Продолжения - осада эстонского посольства "Нашими". Нам показали очень увлекательный мини-сериал на тему: "Как "Наши" победили Эстонию". Съемки закончились,

Death of Nation

2008-02-16T22:37:00.000-08:00

Google video of a British TV reporter traveling to Mordor Russia, telling a sad story about the end of the former empire.Regards to La Russophobe.

Russian Army Analyst to the World: You are defenseless against a cyber attack

2008-02-08T05:12:00.000-08:00

Surprising, but true, the Russian militarists seeing a sign of weakness in the reaction of NATO to the cyber threat are coming closer to actually claiming responsibility for April and May Cyber Assault on Estonia. Even more, one of them is threatening NATO with such cyber attack inflicting "enormous losses" on the West.According to one of the major Russian news outlets, Gazeta, which is

AFP video on Estonia's e-services

2008-02-07T12:33:00.001-08:00

Russia: A Guide for the Cautious Traveler

2008-02-03T01:02:00.000-08:00

by Ivan vs Jaan(first appeared in La Russophobe)“I don't reproach the Russians for being what they are; what I blame them for is their desire to appear to be what we are. They are much less interested in being civilized than in making us believe them so. They would be quite content to be in effect more awful and barbaric then they actually are, if only others could

The documentary The Singing Revolution explained

2008-02-02T00:44:00.000-08:00

See Jim Tusty, director of the film explaining the story of Estonian struggle for independence, here:REASON TVAlso, in a separate video Mart Laar is speaking about history of Estonia.

In cooperation with La Russophobe

2008-02-01T12:57:00.000-08:00

La Russophobe:We are especially proud to publish entry #1 above, a meticulously researched and sparklingly well-written essay from a blogger/reader with penetrating insights about real life in Russia. IVAN vs JAAN's Travel Guide To RussiaThe Sunday Travel SectionObligatory reading for those interested in getting a sense of the atmosphere in the Russian society.

Breaking News! Russia Reveals Cyber Wars Program

2008-01-31T12:44:00.000-08:00

From the Russian press:Russian military admits developing information warfare arsenalAccording to Vedomosti:"Первый заместитель начальника Генштаба ВС РФ генерал Алексей Бурутин на заседании Национального форума информационной безопасности сообщил, что Россия приступила к разработке «информационного оружия»"."First assistant chief of the Russian Armed Forces High Command general Aleksey Burutin (

Rosbalt: Russian Political Hacktivism Concept Explained

2008-01-31T04:18:00.000-08:00

The threat of cyber attacks is promoted as political conspiracy tool?Russian news portal Rosbalt, which is managed by the wife of a top ranking FSB official and close associate of "you know who", Victor Cherkesov, published an interesting opinion about the events of April and May in Estonia, including the famous cyber attacks (emphasize added):"Случаи массовых D-dos-атак и ранее неоднократно

Estonia crushed Nascism

2008-01-29T01:41:00.000-08:00

Picture by a Russian blogger.From today's Russian news it seems that pro-Kremlin movement "Nashi", which gained notoriety mainly for the siege of the Estonian Embassy and participated in the organization of April 2007 mass riots in Tallinn, faces disbandment. Newsru.com and Novye Izvestia report about the imminent decline of the organization, served as “restructuring” by its leadership. According

Citizenship discounts: black maket put price tag on Balts and Russians

2008-01-24T20:19:00.000-08:00

Soon after Latvia joined the free travel area known as Schengen at the end of 2007 the country's authorities revealed, with a sigh of relief, existence of a major passports falsification scam, involving significant number of third countries' nationals illegally obtaining Latvian passports.According to the Russian and Baltic press corrupt officials from the Latvian equivalent of the bureau of

Joke of the day: Kosachev won't let me into... Russia!

2008-01-24T08:19:00.001-08:00

Russian news portals in the Baltic states, including Delfi make headlines reporting on the newest round of Russia's threats against Estonia, this time by Konstantin Kosatchev, chairman of the State Duma's international affairs committee and a major foreign policy actor in Russia's parliament, speaking at European parliamentary discussion club, PACE.Photo from http://www.blogger.com/

Today Russian Headlines

2008-01-23T23:20:00.000-08:00

Reading genuine Russian news daily is a necessary excercise for understanding Russia. Today I felt like posting my readings in this blog.I ran the Russian news section taken from a major online news portal, Newsru.com, through Google autotranslator. Then I edited the text making it more comprehensible. It is far from grammatically perfect, but it is readable. I also included the original text in

Estonia is turning the tide in workforce battle

2008-01-17T08:40:00.000-08:00

EU accession exposed labor markets of the former Soviet satellite states to the dangers of competition. With enormously better working conditions in Western part of our union, notably in countries like the UK, Ireland and Sweden, which were the first to open up for EU8 workers, and on the other hand with unprecedented ease of movement across borders, countries like Estonia felt the pain of losing

Crackdown in Chechnya threatens European integration. UPDATE!

2008-01-15T10:42:00.000-08:00

Just a month after historic Schengen visa free travel area expansion, Western Europe, in particular Österreich and Deutschland are struggling with a wave of newcomers. Immigrant crowds besiegeing former domain of Charlemagne aren't nationals of the countries, which joined the EU in 2004 big bang enlargement, but largely asylum seekers from war torn Russian North Caucasus republic of Chechnya (see

Do not trust British Independent, it is biased; new fact

2008-01-12T02:49:00.000-08:00

In a blog entry few weeks ago I was able to demonstrate some striking inconsistencies in the coverage of the Baltic states by the British newspaper "The Independent". A correspondent of the paper presented to the readers a construct of half-truths and lies, which relied conveniently on the Russian (Kremlin) point of view. Kremlin point of view is easy to detect as in Russian state propaganda,

Kremlin movement exposes own hypocricy. Title of the day

2008-01-09T06:15:00.000-08:00

Today's news title from the webpage of Russian pro-Kremlin youth movement "Nashi":"Free Europe from under Estonian oppression"Once again Estonia is in the headlines across Russia's media space. Hundreds of Nashists (members of fanatical pro-Kremlin "Nashi" youth movement) surrounded the Embassy of the European Union in Moscow, demanding entry into the Schengen member states for their activists,

Is Lithuania's Adamkus overdoing it?

2008-01-08T12:11:00.000-08:00

Anyone who had a chance to step into the corridors of power such as those of Brussels, or just followed foreign policy in-depth reviews domestically (such as in the last Välismääraja) can tell that Western European fonctionnaires can sometimes be similar to their Kremlin homologues in their sensitivity to the Russian myth of WWII. Yesterday, Lithuania's president Valdas Adamkus broke into that

The Singing Revolution.. one of the best films ?!

2008-01-06T23:28:00.000-08:00

Scrolling through the favourite blogs I stumbled upon this entry by a Canadian Estonian "Singing Revolution Box Office receipts", which shows some kind of North American box office records.See the picture (here).The Singing Revolution holds 10th place. At first glance I didn't find it that much interesting, but then I looked at the other titles in the table, like "Juno" (Comedy), 1st place, "I Am

Lars Christensen, you are being laughed at!

2008-01-05T04:53:00.000-08:00

During approximately past two years Danske bank, the number one bank in Denmark also active in other markets in Scandinavia has been prophesying financial Doom's Days in the Baltic states. The campaign was lead by its chief analyst Lars Christensen.Months after months we've been hearing from this Danish bank about how Baltic states' economic growth isn't sustainable, how hard the landing is going

Goloskokov captured!

2008-01-04T12:34:00.001-08:00

Konstantin Goloskokov, photo from Jaanus PiirsaluOne of the leaders of Kremlin youth movement "Nashi" Konstantin Goloskokov has been captured by the Lithuanian border guards on the attempt to illegally cross into Lithuania with the goal of infiltrating Estonia, Baltic and Russian media reports, including TASS.A look at Mr Goloskokov's record reveals that he is famous as one of the leading figures

.. hearing the voices of the oppressed

2008-01-03T08:10:00.000-08:00

To provide the readers with some official enough Russian perspective I'd like to demonstrate this translated excerpt from an interview with Estonian far left activist, director of youth activities centre "Zdes" ("Here") Igor Ivanov, taken by Kremlin News Agency Regnum (from Ladin "Kingdom"), 31 of Dec, 2007:Regnum: What in your opinion was the most important or significant event of 2007? Why?Igor

"Nashi" hate Britain. But like British education

2007-12-28T05:19:00.000-08:00

"Vladimir Putin's controversial youth movement is to send a select group of activists to study at British universities - despite its disdain for Britain and its harassment of the British ambassador in Moscow."A bunch of future Cambridge students?(http://www.nashi.su/)A report by the British newspaper Telegraph, which has received attention in the Russian media as well (here an example; here

Award-winning documentary "The Singing Revolution" on WSJ video

2007-12-27T01:39:00.000-08:00

The Trailer

Russian editors shoot themselves in the foot, again

2007-12-21T06:09:00.000-08:00

Kononov's "breaking news" as reported in Russia, later removed from the front and changed.Kononov won the case against LatviaStrasbourg court acquitted KononovRed partisan wonThese are both the breaking news titles in major Russian media outlets (at the moment Yandex news search engine finds 54 Russian news sources reporting it today) as well as a demonstration of their pitiful failure in

What lies on the other side

2007-12-19T11:06:00.000-08:00

Estonian political scientist Karmo Tüür (here's his unrelated blog in Estonian) once spotted this photo in local Russian newspaper Molodezh Estonii: The photograph depicts two opposing fortresses on the banks of river Narva, at night. If you look tensely into the darkness you should be able to see the silhouette of a second fortress on the right side of the picture (take a look at the same

The Indepenent went to Liepaja, ended up in Kremlin

2007-12-15T01:58:00.000-08:00

In a surprising move for British press one of the island's publications, the Independent, lashed out at Estonia and Latvia for allegedly bad treatment of their Russian-speaking minorities. The author of this piece, Mr Chris Schüler went to Latvian city of Liepaja, where he made following discoveries about the situation of Baltic states' former Russian colonists:Non-citizens cannot vote, obtain

Kremlin considering another crushing blow to business

2007-12-13T22:56:00.000-08:00

Citing unfair privatization and profit loss to the state budget the newly elected Kremlin-friendly Russian parliament is considering confiscating 20% of 10 years profit of big Russian business, which was part of privatization of former communist state assets in the middle 90s.There are two reasons given for the decision which would transfer some 62,5 billion dollars from private firms to state

Russia reinvented the solution for low election turnover problem

2007-12-11T10:02:00.000-08:00

It seems I might have discovered workable solution for a problem, which has been one of the most troubling for the politicians and election officials in Russia: low voters' turnover at the elections. Indeed, although the turnover in Russia's latest parliament elections was an improvement over the previous record with some 63% of people showing at the poll stations, the overall worry remains and

Who the hell are former communist countries?

2007-12-11T03:46:00.000-08:00

In my opinion the term "former communist countries" frequently used to refer to the countries of the former USSR and its allies is controversial. Even without going into the Baltic states' legal countinuity doctrine. Instead the term "former socialist countries" should be used. Of course, such term could be understood as referring to Germany or any other EU memberstate where the socialists

World business is cutting ties with Russia's FSB "investment fund"

2007-12-04T05:15:00.000-08:00

European Bank for Reconstruction and Development has issued official statement in which on behalf of itself and its partners announced the end of co-operation with Russian investment fund Fanansgroup, whose CEO Oleg Shvartsman, in an interview several days ago in his capacity of one of the business leaders receiving orders from Kremlin, revealed existence of far-reaching plan to redistribute

Oprichniks vs Boyars 2.0

2007-11-29T23:28:00.000-08:00

prichniks were Russian paramilitary forcesestablished in 1564 under the rule of Tsar Ivan the Terrible to operate outside, in parallel and partly as a substitute to the Russian Tsardom civil, military and court apparatus. As a rule Oprichniks, including many of their highest leaders, were raised from low classes to serve the Tsar directly. Supposedly the Tsar needed them to crush powerful Russian

Run, Yuli, run!

2007-11-28T10:26:00.001-08:00

Photo (C) Alexandr Kogtev (Александр Когтев)As crackdown on the opposition rallies by the incumbent Kremlin administration intensified in the wake of fast approaching State Duma elections this photograph of a man running from OMON (OMON is the Russian riot police, see the entry in Wikipedia) appeared in the Russian blogs. According to the bloggers the old man in question is:..."a lonely dissident

The Russian Federation abandoned its attempts of making the Bronze Soldier an international issue

2007-11-23T01:01:00.000-08:00

In a suddenly sober move the Russian Federation abandoned its efforts of making the question of relocation of the Bronze Soldier monument (see Wikipedia on the subject) an international issue. This might become the last in a series of attempts to raise the particular issue in various international organizations such as the EU and PACE.This development came within the process of adapting a UN GA

"Defending" the Russian values: pillage and loot

2007-11-16T22:42:00.000-08:00

The violence, directed largely at the police and the content of the boutiques in Tallinn downtown during the infamous April events, led the protesters-turned-looters to be branded "gangs of youths running riot" (DPA) or, perhaps more precisely, "gangs of marauding Russian youth" (Reuters) on "six-hour rampage and looting spree" (AFP) as the police was forced to respond to the "protesters trashing

History matters

2007-10-15T23:25:00.000-07:00

American columnist Anne Applebaum writes brilliant overview of some of the hottest Eastern European historical arguments, including that between Tallinn and Moscow. Intriguingly it starts about Skype, but it really implies that the US should support recently born European democracies, not reborn Stalinists further East.A large part of the argument between the two lies in historical grievances,

BBC Mardell's fight against windmills

2007-10-12T04:59:00.000-07:00

BBC's Mark Mardell has recently been on a fact-finding mission to Latvia, exploring the controversy of the so-called "stateless persons" (Stateless in Latvia). He described his impressions and discoveries in his BBC blog. As a consequence of touching upon this sensitive subject he was assailed by both ethnic Balts and ethnic Russians, which compelled him to write another entry, available here: