Russia-Estonia Tensions Building? Drone Attack On NATO Ambassador's Home Sparks Row

[Igel]

2. I'd keep them separate.

Russian "ownership" of Estonia long predates NATO. You read Russian literature from the 1800s and they speak of traveling to/through places like Narva as though they were heading through Tula.

The geography also matters--it's one half of the land forming the strait that leads to Petersburg and is the most distal Baltic country from the main landmass of Europe. It had a large percentage of the population that spoke only Russian and a significant percentage of the population has a RF passport because of language requirements post-USSR and the linguistic "distance" between the Finnic Estonian and Slavic Russian. (That last problem is vanishing as older Russians die, but that just puts a window on how long a Russian claim of "protecting Russians" in any meaningful sense can endure.)