Alexei Pushkov, a member of the Russian parliament's upper house, said Thursday that the Estonian foreign minister got himself confused trying to defend sanctions on Sputnik
MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 16th January, 2020) Alexei Pushkov, a member of the Russian parliament's upper house, said Thursday that the Estonian foreign minister got himself confused trying to defend sanctions on Sputnik.
Urmas Reinsalu told Sputnik earlier that pressure on its office in the Baltic country had nothing to do with the news agency per se � and everything with the EU sanctions against the head of its parent company, Rossiya Segodnya.
"The Estonian foreign policy chief is really confused. Tallinn's actions against Sputnik are not aimed at Sputnik (?) but rather at Rossiya Segodnya director Dmitry Kiselev and are taken in 'defense of Europe.' Utter nonsense," Pushkov tweeted.
He argued that Estonian persecution of Sputnik employees, who were threatened with legal action if they continued working for the agency, was a means of closing an "undesirable" media outlet.
Kiselev was one of Russians slapped with EU sanctions in 2014 over their purported role in the Ukrainian crisis. Rossiya Segodnya or Sputnik, for that matter, have never been banned in the EU but have faced a lot of discrimination in Estonia and its Baltic neighbors in the past years.
