As an Estonian, it's a great video overall, but I'd like to mention that EKRE actually had a worse showing than expected/feared overall. They lost s eats compared to the last election and Reform dominated as leaders, really. This may be due to the fact that the main topic going into the elections was both EKRE and Reform scaring their voters about what will happen if the other gets to power.
A lot of the time in round ups like this the generalise the Russian speakers in other countries as being in support of Putin and possibly the war. Have you noticed any shift in their thinking at all since the invasion, or are they of just the same minds as before?
American here, I personally want to see the Kremlin ousted for their role in interfering with our elections back in 2016, and was a bit worried they might try something like it with yours- I guess this time they’ve got something bigger on their hands to worry about; namely, the collapse of their military😂
As a European from Portugal, and despite all of our differences between different European countries, i must confess that i do love the place that Europe is at (except for braindead Brexit) and i'll never forget how hard it was to get here. I know it might seem extreme but, imo, people that can't sacrifice a little of their own individual lives (ofc taking into consideration certain basic limits) to help other European nations (and people from around the world) specially in a case of such direct abuse, agression and neo-imperialism as blatant as in the case of Ukraine... they're just hypocrites that can't look pass their own belly-button, greed and braindead prejudice. Happy that Estonia chose the other path and that if Estonia ever needs help, Europe will be there to answer the call!
I'm Portuguese too and I feel exactly the same way. For all its shortcomings, the European project might been one of the most amazing and ambitious political projects in history. A continent of dozens of different countries, with different cultures, languages and religions all coming together under an umbrella of shared values such as democracy, human rights and freedom, all different but all united in what truly matters. It's kinda beautiful when you think about it.
@@guerreiro943 Yeap! It is by no means perfect (nothing is) but at least i feel that it strives for something that is not completely petty and short-sighted! I do love the small differences but i do love much more that is greater what unites us (while keeping our own small differences that can also bring us together as a worthwhile experience of life).
Os patriotas irão governar a europa. Olha para o crescimento dos nacionalistas na maioria dos países europeus. O teu sonho(na verdade o pesadelo) de um super estado europeu nunca acontecerá.
I guess i must be braindead then for voting brexit. I voted brexit for the same reasons i support ukraine now. I support democracy and their right to retain it along with their freedom to exist as a nation. The UKs MEPs elected by the people were not representing the people. Unelected EU commisioners were. Creating the policies and the "peoples representatives" were there just to rubberstamp them through. Thats not democracy. However if the brexit vote had gone the other way then i would have accepted it and respected the peoples decision. Unlike some. I also respect all EU europeans if they choose to live in a more federal society. After all, they were all subjegated 80 odd years ago. The uk never was so perhaps thats why we are more protective of our democracy than others.
@@goncalooliveira7784 e já agora, não saias de casa não! Se não saires aí sim é que o "SUPER ESTADO EUROPEU" vai querer ditar as medidas correctas e o material para te fazerem as cuecas🤣
"Never forget the way Moscow negotiates", Kaja Kallas warned recently on a TV set: 1 - Demand the maximum, including things you have never owned 2 - Give an ultimatum with terrifying threats 3 - During the negotiations, don't give anything away, because in the West there will always be someone to give something away
@@meuko Is this a real comment? They talk like this out in the open daily, and France and Germany are weak links, or at least now is taking a harder stance the last few months, but still, they are the weakest in the alliance.
@@kev492001 What do you mean is this a real comment? And who is "they" who talk like "this"? If there's a comment in need of the question whether or not it's real, it would be yours. And what about France and Germany is weak?
@@kev492001 Weakest of the Alliance Germany giving the most support in the world to Ukraine, second only to big federal state US. You had Hungary right there at weakest link but went for the easy online propaganda.
Not really, since they have alot other ideas that are quite popular among Estonian people's (that the current and previous government try to censor) that balance out the "let's not help Ukraine" and they are also very good at propaganda
@@THE_TRACKMAN Estonians on average are Pro-LGBT and not reactionary. I guess the only thing that could be mainstream is their nationalistic pride, but tis such a toxic form of it in that party tho
The not-so-obvious situation is pretty common in EU's east wing, Estonia is no exception. Recent "decisive victory of pro-EU, pro-western and pro-UA sentiments" embodied in our, Czech presidential election result is also not quite as clear as we (certainly I) would like it to be. The other side is by no means defeated, although it has somewhat retreated for now. The cost of living crisis bites us hard (you could've noticed that our inflation is even worse than Estonian) and people who can't see round the corner start to grumble. In any case, congratulations to Estonia and generally, to all people who understand that certain values are far more important than being nice and cosy. History has a tendency to repeat itself and when we forget what's really important and start to take it for granted, we shall end up back in a situation when we'll sorely miss it.
As a westerner, it's disturbing to see in Eastern Europe, but it's ten times worse here. Ukraine is taking the cost for European and global security, and the people who refuse to recognise this are a big problem, on left and right.
@@雷-t3j As a matter of fact, I also deem it more dangerous, seeing it in the western countries---exactly because you guys don't have that, still relatively fresh, truly _personal_ experience with how it is to trade your freedoms and rights for that sort of upholstery-like mind-cell of authoritarianism and dictatorship. Here, there are still quite a lot of people (mostly old people) who pine over the Communist past---because it was simply easier for them and many of them didn't quite manage to deal with the changes in the '90s. But a strong majority of people do remember (or are told by their parents) how much worse it really was. To put it simply, for each and every good memory somebody might have, there are a hundred of horrible ones... So I'm not very afraid of some sort of relapse, not at this point, certainly. But seeing the degradation of democratic principles in the west really is worrying; exactly because here, we _know_ how clandestine it can be. Before you realise it, you're neck deep in trouble. And taking democracy for granted is exactly what paved the path to the Communist coup d'etat in Czechoslovakia in 1948. Please don't make the same mistake.
@@vencik_krpo Well said. Exactly my thoughts. Putins worldwide propaganda with RT etc has been using one of the wests freedoms against us for the last 20 odd years. Namely, freedom of expression. Promoting nationalism and denegrating democracy whenever it can. Unbelievably many are being duped by it. Even from the political left. UK ex labour leader corbyn has appeared on it. Salmond ex leader of the SNP was actually hosting a show on it the day of the invasion. Apparently he wants to go back to it after the war is over.
There was now anniversary of Czechoslovak coup d'état 1948 while people chose pro Moscow government already in 1946. Just one election and 1200 years of connection to western nations was lost even now people refer to us as eastern Europe
@@vencik_krpo THIS! As a Pole I'm worried seeing how blind people are in the west. They take freedom and democracy for granted. My whole childhood parents and grandparents were telling me horrible stories of their lives (abuse by government, censorship, firing from job, because you don't worship the party, shortages of EVERYTHING, poverty... etc.) This is all repeating itself. I hope Europe will stay strong.
As an Estonian, who lives in the capital, I can with high confidence say that Ukraine was not the main topic, the primary topic by a very long mile was not letting EKRE win, people were more worried about EKRE winning than what each party actually promised Yes it is not a healthy mindset to worry only about that, but knowing who EKRE is, it is genuinely scary that they got so close Thank whoever mighty is above for not letting them win
As far as I know, EVERYONE PRAYED to finally get rid of K. Kallas. She's the most hated person. I'm sad to see how people are so blinded by Reform. They NEVER protect and help their own people. They TAKE. They say they don't have money for poor people, yet let's help Ukraine. K. Kallas made the inflation much worse and made her own people to fend for themselves. Plus, Reformierakond has proven time and time again how they only care about rich people and big firms. Yes, EKRE says sh*t Things, but at least they stand for their own people first rather than other country's and kissing EU a**
@@kelluke13 Lmao calm down. We shall not be egoistic and we need to help others. You know why? Becuase they help us too and there is a big fat hostile country next to us who wants to eat us alive any time. And when they try who helps us? Our allies. Also K. Kallas is popular. Shes hated.....by you i guess. Also how can you say Reform doesnt protect? They literally try to put 3% of GDP to military. So take your egoistic self back to reality because MOST Estonians wanted this. Man i love democracy.
Its just sad how little people like you know about politics and history. Any sane person with even a slightest knowledge about history knows that EKRE was only party in estonia that had geniuly Estonian intrests in mind. With 20 years of Reform dictatorship we as a nation have been destroied. The unity that we had against Soviet union is gone, our national pride which gave us the strength to carry on though occupations is gone. And all that because people like you know nothing of history. Its just sad that people like you destroyed my ancestral home, culture and nation, because you think western media dont lie.
Damn nothing on Estonia 200? Was hoping you'd touch on that. Also I get the narrative of the video was more to focus on Ukraine and the key issues but I find it interesting you talked about how well EKRE did when they performed worse than last year.
''Damn nothing on Estonia 200'', that's because no one really likes them anymore and only dumb and naive people vote for them at this point, you can thank or blame the Russian invasion of Ukraine for that
@@rizkyadiyanto7922 Everything is inconsistent ye. For example the letter "a" can have like 3 or 4 different pronunciations. Car, tank, plane, train etc. It is often hard to describe how something is said because you need to use specific words as examples of letter pronunciation.
@@rizkyadiyanto7922 That also depends where you are in the UK. The north pronounce their vowels differently to the south. The vowels in the north south more continental European.
Only citizens can vote. The 0.3M, who are not eligible, are citizens of another country and some of the don't have citizenship at all. If those people want to vote then they just have to apply for citizenship and do a test. Simple as that. However there is a catch. Estonian citizens are allowed to have only one citizenship. You have to forfit your previos citizenship when aquiring the Estonian citizenship. (There are few exaptions to that if you have Estonian ancestry).
@@lawrencefrost9063 maybe you live in some fantasy video game because I don’t understand how his comment changes anything… that guy only confirmed my point that TLDR seriously does little research. How on earth can Estonias election have 1.3 million voters when that’s their entire population? That’s what TLDR said😂I’m seriously confused at your comment here
The way that you pronounced "Kaja Kallas" and "Riigikogu" was pretty hilarious. Also another thing I would like to add is that the Eestimaa Ühendatud Vasakpartei (Estonian United Left Party) was really unpopular until this election, they got 14k votes and they are notorious for being extremely pro-Kremlin.
@@konokiomomuro7632 I agree it's something to look into. Although I appreciate much more their content over their pronunciation. Also, I see Jack being much less "random British guy" that someone who call themselves @bababababababa
he doesn't even try to pronounce names of people and cities correctly and I think it's very ignorant. This is what annoys me the most about him, besides his sometimes oversimplified or even inaccurate presentation of things. I started watching this channel because of the other blonde guy, but he doesn't seem to appear anymore.
The one thing English speakers should learn, is that they speak one of the very few languages that do not pronounce the J with a Y sound. So they should always choose the Y sound when reading any foreign words with a J.
As an Estonian myself Im really glad that you covered estonian elections. I loved the video but would like to point out certain things. -At the start of the video you said that 1.3 million estonians went to the polls. 1.3 million is the whole population of the country. The actual size of the registered voters is about 900,000. -Important fact while covering these elections was the unusually high attendance. 63% of registered voters actually voted, which is a record. Many experts believe that this is due to the fact that difficult times have mobilized more voters. -The winners of these elections were clearly liberals parties. Reformierakond(the winner of the elections) and also Eesti200(E200 had no seats before, now they have 14) -The losers of the elections were clearly EKRE and Keskerakond(the centrist party), Keskerakond lost 10 seats. Mostly because the have always counted on russian voters to vote for them. But the russian voters have found other alternatives like Eestimaa Ühendatud Vasakpartei(in short its a leftist party with ties to Kremlin). -One of the anomalies of these elections was Aivo Peterson, A candidate that was running in the Narva city district in the Eestimaa Ühendatud Vasakpartei list. Now his whole platform stood on one aspect: closer ties with russia and the support for "peace". The end of support for ukraine. That message was well received in Narva(most people that live in Narva are russians). He narrowly missed out in getting a seat in riigikogu. As an Estonian I say, thank god!(jumal tänatud!)
@@Mr_Onion_TH-camThere are many reasons that may be behind this. Firstly we need to understand the Estonian electoral system. Estonia has online voting, which means that a registered voter doesn't have to go to the booth to vote, he/she can do so behind a computer using ID card Now the conservatives are the only political force that are openly critical of this system. They say that these votes can't be controlled, checked and that means the elections can't be trusted. And they tell their supporters not to vote online That is a negative thing for the party, because although many of their supporters are older and used to voting on the booth, many of them are also younger and would like to vote online. But since the party tells them not to vote online, they may possibly not vot at all Secondly the conservatives were the only political force that didn't clearly state that they wish to continue the support for Ukraine. They did say they support the Ukrainian force, but also said for example that Estonia should close the borders for Ukrainian refugees. Now Estonian people have always been very supportive of Ukraine and I feel like many people were disappointed by EKREs position In summary there are many reasons for why the polls and the actual results differ. But I would say the two I mentioned are the main ones.
@@zygoptera666 Its fun too see western europeans speaking about inflation and hard times like they had a slightest idea. For example when electricity bill alone goes bigger than peoples pension or salary. Then to read thoose comments, stay strong and be good and support ukraine and crap like that.
@@kaljutamme7468 There is nothing wrong in supporting Ukraine actually. Evil must be confronted with Force. I believe in it... This electricity bill crap is not true actually. But... never feed a troll. I obviously failed on that...
@@zygoptera666 Yes there is nothing wrong in helping Ukraine as long as e dont destroy our own country and nationality but thats what we are doing. Takeing in in last year alone 100 000 immigrants is our countrys death, all the systems are collapsing or collapsed basicaly, we are not majority in our own capital, our second largest city is 100 000 people. Everything has its limits and unlike rest of the world we have by far crossed that limit all ready. For example germany sends something like 20-30 tanks to Ukraine which is roughly 10% of their tank force, we sent 80 out of our 100 artillery pices. See the difference here?
@@zygoptera666 Also people who cant accept the facts because those sound too sureal to them and then start to blame other in trolling and liers are worst. This electricity bill stuff is reality and you are just ignorant foul who dont even check for facts.
Situation in Estonia is complicated (and most of the problems stem from the Russian minority, obviously). That said, Estonians know who they're dealing with. They will be most certainly unhappy at the risen cost of living but it's a price they are willing to pay to stay safe from the bear at the border. As for the Russian minority, they are literally a bridge away from the great motherland and yet they choose to remain. One might wonder why...
It might be in the future. Maybe Estonians are planning to invade denmark this time so that a new flag will apear from the heaven to them. *To get the joke, you need to know the creation story of tha danish flag*
I see many similarities with Latvia. We have the same voting system, roughly the same coalition. We don't have electronic votes, and Russian language was abolished years ago in public schools (At least Latvian was made obligatory in all schools), private schools remain divided. You see that Estonia and Latvia are top-3 givers to Ukraine per GDP, Latvia has banned russian migrants, destroyed the biggest phallic soviet monument in the Baltics last year...
However we still have a large portion of pro-russians and conservatives in our government (at least former being in the opposition), which is sad for our future and prosperity. I'm genuinely happy for my Estonian vennad ja õed!
@@timsonins oo boy, You say you are my naber jet you say you are happy because Reform got to power again? Even in your own comment there is big problem. First for example, Reform party has been in power in Estonia for 20 years however unlike Latvia Estonia have been unable to lose russian education? How is that possible that anti russian goverment that has been led by one party for two decades havent been able to lose russian education? See some problem here? Second learn about history of that party. Its previous leader and current leader father Siim Kallas was one of the highest commmunist party member in Estonian from 1972 until 1990. It was on power during biggest Russian money loundery in history, It tried to lose draft, it tried to get visa free travel between Estonia, It lost military secret service, It tried to disband militia which is most of our military, It tried to give away 5,2% of our territory for free, It gave away Russian, soviet occupation compensation money and so on. Also unlike you we havent banned Russian immigrants, we have no background check on our eastern border unlike you. Its sad how people belive the lies they have been told by state media without looking facts and history. In truth in Estonia the biggest party is Pro russian party led by high ranking ex communist party members and that party have been on power for 20 years. Conservatives are the ones who are trying to stop all those things but media is lieing black to white and white to black. It just saddens me that most of the young people dont see it thorugh nor do real fact checking. Also fun fact that Pro-Russian party made official proposition in parlament to referendum question to join Russian federation.
@@egertroos in our (and most likely Estonian) case it's basically the same. Conservatives grew up in Soviet Union, so they try to maintain the Soviet Union values, just what Russian government is doing now to their country
@@peterebel7899 Estonia is one of the most densely populated countries in the world. Fortunately. We have sth like 75% forest. A lot of nature. This is sth a lot other people in teh world find unbelievable in Estonia. "What, you can just go to the beach or the forest, it"s not private property" Yes, we can. I have a Belgian friend who spends all summers in Estonia because one can JUST GO to a forest or a lake or the seaside, and it is all right here, everywhere. Apparently in Belgium, and a lot of Western Europe, there is no accessible nature left. All private property. Estonia is basically all nature, and I love it. Very few people. In the capital Tallinn even there is a lot of space and people are not on top of each other.
@@helengolovina4597 Helen I know. With this persiflage of dump Breiteers' phrases I did not intend to assault Estonia. I am looking forward visiting your nice country with a camper van 🙂 BTW: This private property issue is not the case in Germany, Austria, Switzerland and many more central European countries. Accès to woods is free, i.e. in Bavaria there is a dedicated law enforcing free access to lake shores (most of the stretch). Nature preserves does limit accessibility in some special places.
The party that won is liberal and very pro EU. Sadly it damned Poland before the war for having conservative values. Their representative also voted Poland to have sanctions in EU. Now that the war started they and their controlled media have shut up on talking BS on Poland. Estonian people like Poland and have similar mindset and values.
@@t2216 there is nothing wrong in having an opposing view. The Polish government has been run (since 2016) by populist, right wing, conservatives with many questionable and controversial policies. Some of them are obviously anti democratic. The question regarding EU sanctions in response is a legitimate one, in my humble opinion.
@@blind8686 In my humble opinion we here in eastern Europe should all stick together and not vote against each other. Poland people will vote themselves who they want - is it populist or who ever they like - it is their choice, not Estonia government business. This party foreign minister U.Paet was clearly huilo in media few years ago and voted against Poland. Current one U.Reinsalu is good and supports Poland and Ukraine.
@@t2216 i agree with you about solidarity. Being a good neighbors doesn’t mean we have to approve and applaud everything, but tolerate and accept most differences. Question is, where do we draw the line. If the common european values, like democracy, free press or independent judiciary are undermined by populist parties, the criticism is deserved.
I think the people of Estonia are more concerned by the cost of living in a Neo-Soviet "union". Obviously the cost of living is a major topic, but a psychotic Putin right next door kinda forces the issue.
@@boarfaceswinejaw4516 Yes, Russia. The attempt to recreate the Soviet empire under God-Emperor Putin, one of the greatest failures in modern history. There is a reason why the saying "to do a Putin" means "to destroy everything you try to improve".
yup, going by the slogans used by parties during the election, only Social democrats had a mention of the cost of living, everyone else is mentioning either defending Estonia or helping Ukraine
@@GnosticAtheist maybe im just more cynical, but i think putin's real reasons for invading ukraine has less to do with "re-building the empire" and moreso to avoid Ukraine spreading notions of democracy into russia through cultural proxy, and providing the EU with gas and oil from crimea.
@@boarfaceswinejaw4516 Gas and oil from Crimea? Could you elaborate? Its gas infrastructure was settled through Nordstream 1&2, both running from Russia itself into the EU. Also, taking over Crimea is a hard red line for Russia, meaning they'd declare total war if such an attempt was made. After the 2014 coup the notion and acknowledgment of this red line completely disappeared and so did the notion of many other agreements made between the two nations. Now also think about all the "military outposts" placed near Russian borders, with silos which can house nuclear ballistic missiles which are able to reach Moscow in 2~5 hours; they don't house them, but they can be converted within the day! Ukraine also publicly stating that they want to join NATO is another reason for this whole ordeal, both the US and multiple European leaders (including Estonia's big mouthed leader) have stated that they're willing to support the retaking of Crimea, which, again, is a hard red line, which would literally lead us into a nuclear war IF Ukraine was allowed into the EU AND the plans were set into motion. NATO's aggressive expansion also breaks many longstanding agreements. Also take into account the fact that since 2014, Ukraine has been increasing its military presence around Donbass by an extreme margin, constantly shelling Russian citizens, do you still, after all this, really think that that's his reason for the invasion? I'm surprised it didn't happen any sooner!
Whats with all the ceremonial government leaders in Europe? Feels weird for politicians to be talking about reducing Ukraine support due to the cost of living crisis, while there are government positions specifically built to not do anything
To be honest, these roles are such that cancelling them would save 0,001% of what is needed to tackle the cost of living crisis. Plus, they are not totally ceremonial as they are able to dissolve parliament and call for new elections, although they only do that when it is needed, not whenever, hence why they are referred to as having no political Power, or being neutral, or being cerimonial
@@MM-un3ob Its more an example of an issue in a lot of governments nowadays. Jobs for the sake of having jobs. People who really dont need to be there for their department to work, but stick around because it isnt a priority to make sure the government runs efficiently from a monetary stand point
A lot of their role is based around being the ultimate national representative, as head of state, and also being the person who can reboot the political system if it jams or if the government is drifting into dangerous policy territory
The ceremonial leaders are not government leaders. They are cerimonial national leaders. The government leader is, by definition, whoever is doing the main job in the party. It's important to have this position so there are checks and balances. They aren't actually powerless, just generally powerless... But they are still the most important person in the country de jure. Not necessarily de facto.
The ceremonial leaders of countries do have a role to play they often act as the face of nation they make public speeches at important events and so on they might not have political power but they to play an important role as someone how can deal with all the public events that dont require the actual government leaders attention and they can actually run the country, In Estonia the presidents position and dutys are constitutional so getting rid of them would be a public vote i believe
And ours aint? Our constituion say that elections take place first sunday of march. And must be some for everyone. However we have early voting that takes place whole week previous to first sunday and same time we have e-voting which is totaly different from paper voting. Example you can change e-vote but not paper vote.
Mate, the UK still has Monarchy instead of a President!... Wtf makes you think that the UK (that voted for Brexit as if a self-harm toddler was given a knife to play with, constructed on a mountain of lies) is a good example of Democracy? I guess that next you're gonna try to explain to me how the elections in the US are great and completely Democratic...
@@Apollorion France and Italy don't have it either, what's your point. The US cannot have it because each representative is elected at the state level, not in an overall national election, so you either win, or you lose, there's no way to break the congressional seat up for election into smaller parts to share it with the loser party.
In total, We have The Reform party which is Central leftist, The Center party, The Ultra conservative party as the main ones that duke it out, but there's also the Social Democrats party (the red flower), Eesti 200, which is a liberal party and also a fairly new, their first time in the parliament and house and then we have the Fatherland party. Most of them are generally center leaning, but the worst of the worst is EKRE. They are the christian equivalent of the far right Muslims or close to it. They are a horrible bunch of people, they spew conspiracy theories, they think women belong in the kitchen and are baby factories, any LGBTQ people are perversions and proverbially deemed to burn at the stake as per god and NATO and the EU and all that is evil globalism and we should break apart and almost copying the MAGA people and Trumpisms, they do not accept the results and want to take this to court, claiming the e-voting was a fraud and the election was basically stolen etc etc. The funny part is, that they pushed hard for their followers to vote by ballot, which is common for their electors anyway, meanwhile, the liberal crowd that makes the country run for the most part, is all online focused, so no wonder they were leading in ballots and got totally smashed once the e-votes came in. The fact that centrist and left liberal parties won by so much is a testament that our educational system works and that we are one of the least religious countries in the world - Liberal parties here are mostly popular with educated, open-minded and generally average or above-average earning households, while as the conservative parties are generally more popular among rural people and the majority of seniors (left-over mentality from soviet times) who make pennies in comparison. In a way, i think what the current new government should do, is look at those people who elect the ultra conservatives and see what we can do as a country for them. I think, they've been left behind somewhat, but it is hard to say, if it's by their own choice or due to lack in support.
yup. We've been telling them for decades, it's not even that far of a travel, but for some odd reason, they stay. Not sure why, they Crave Russian rule, but don't want to go there for good.
I suppose that is one of the negatives about not letting 'pre-draft dodgers' into Estonia. They can't tell the sedentary Russians how bad it is across the boarder.
@@SideKickStudios listen here, we don't WANT to leave. We want to have the right to have our own culture alongside yours, which we are apparently not allowed to. We are apparently also not allowed to have education in OUR OWN language, which is a human right. Think on it.
@@aadmiral1689 That's a lot to unpack there. Firstly, no one has ever said, you have no right to hold your culture. If anyone did, that's not what most Estonians subscribe to. But you have to understand, that you not only have rights, you also have obligations, which is to uphold the law of the land. Now, when talking about culture, you need to specify, what part of it you are talking about. Your songs, your language, your poetry, your cuisine, your ancestral ideologies? Literally no one cares if you keep your culture, but it's the ideologies that we do not accept, because, well clearly, we can see what the russian cultural ideology means. Georgia, Ukraine, Moldova and many other countries know all too well. And as far as education goes, i do not honestly understand, why you would think you have any right what so ever to demand education in a foreign country that you or your parents or grandparents moved to, in YOUR OWN language. This is part of the ideology that has been fed to you by russian imperialistic mindset. Let's turn that table around - what would most russians say or think, if Estonian minority living in russia demanded, that they had Estonian language education part of the national educational system. We both know what russians would say to that. So why do you expect this to be a right for you in Estonia? For that matter, in any foreign country. Ultimately a country can only be the best it can be, if those who came in adhere to local laws and culture and respect it, when they learn the local language, integrate into the society and contribute equally on all levels. Otherwise you're just a descendant of migratory minority demanding special rules of another country. You can have your cultural backround, no one argues that, but you can't demand russian way of life and everybody to just dance around your wishes. That's not how it works. If you want your culture and russian way of life - as already mentioned - you can find that on the other side of the border. You'll find you'll loose a lot of privileges, luxuries and rights over there, but hey, if that is what you want then it's the price you'll need to pay for 'russki mir'.
I expected Sotsiaaldemokraatlik Erakond to do a bit better but it seems the people were really scared of EKRE and voted in droves for Kallas' Reformierakond. Also, I have to say the pronunciation in this video is amazing. Future notes for Estonian: Ja is "ya" In Gi, the G makes the sound as in the English word "Game", not as in "Giant". These are the main ones I think you can get right. I'm not bothering with the rest.
Not Estonia 200. Its a shame for our nation. I am talking about how an woman Johanna Maria Lehtme led an charity organisation Slava Ukraini and she herself stole millions of euros from there to fund estonia 200 campaign. Really a disgrace.
My favourite thing about this channel is how the presenters seem to have no concept of the fact that different orthographies even exist. It's not even just them pronouncing it in an English accent, or struggling with letters like the spanish 'j' that don't exist in English, but them replacing perfectly pronounceable letters with whatever the sound would be if you just assumed that the word was English. Like the PM would just be Kaia or Kaya, which is easily pronounceable for an English person, but it's almost like they have no concept that 'j' can ever mean anything else. Reejeekoogoo jfc I love this. Please, never change.
The cost of living is high in my nation in EU as well. The price of food has increased a lot and it's hurting, financially. Even so, I don't want that to change, if it would mean less support for Ukraine. So what if my wallet is hurting. I'm not fighting on the front lines, risking my life like Ukrainian heroes. It's a small price to pay, barely worth mentioning. Slava Ukraini! 🇸🇪❤🇺🇦
As an Estonian, i can say this is a great overview. Only mistake is that, actually EKRE is now leaded by Martin Helme, not Mart Helme. Martin is his son.
I’m glad someone said this. Just because they’re European they are now “migrants” or “expats” but when they’re from the Middles East or Africa they’re now “refugees”. Typical
Thank you for the video. Italian living in Estonia here. Just a couple of points: 1) Reform does not want to spend more on the cost of living issues but military issues are a different story; 2) it appears from your video that Russian-Estonians are generally pro-Russia. I would say only a minority of them, the rest is quite pro-Ukraine imho.
@@egertroos Firstly, Estonia is a member of the EU and a multicultural state. Secondly, your attitude smell like a typical “talupoja-mentality”. Thanks God EKRE lost this election and REF/200/SDE will rule the country. We do not need here politicians with medieval views.
Funny to see how Estonia's politics are more or less the same as Finnish politics. We have a parilamentary election next month and the themes are mostly the same. How much debt to take and Ukraine/nato situation.
Estonia's budget is 3% in negative right now. If one would exclude foreign investments then it would be 20% in negative. Now that Reformierakond won the election, we can wait for budget cuts all around everywhere and an increase in inequality.
@@Gaming4Justice Oh please, spoken like a true conservative. If you have enough braincells to rub together, you can make a life worth living anywhere under any circumstances, including Estonia. Maybe stop blaming the government in every shortfall of your life, get off your ass and get to work improving your own life? Conservatives and left leaning people constantly blame Reform party and expect the government for handouts on a silver platter, demonizing their constituents, the business owners and the main contributors to the economy as if they are bad. How do you not understand, if the businesses get linched by the government and spending is increased for the ones who can't get their sh*t together, then who's gonna foot the bill? Where's the money coming from exactly? It doesn't just magically appear out of thin air, it's the business that generates the bulk of those tax euros that pay for most of everything. Equality/inequality exists in your head - If all you do is go to work for a average or sub-average pay and then spend the rest of your day watching TV or doing some other meaningless thing, your life wont get better. Instead, learn a new useful skill, put it to good use, hustle on the side, get good at it, start a business, bring value to the economy and yourself, grow, hire people, bring value to them.. That's how you 'cure' the inequality, not by blaming the sitting government, who ever it happens to be.
@@SideKickStudios Not even a conservative lol, didn't even vote conservative. I am sure you know nothing about the history or world view of all those parties.
@@Gaming4Justice I was born during the soviet Estonian times, i've stood in the Baltic Way hand in hand with our brothers and sisters as one, i've seen life on both sides of the curtain and have seen these parties become what they are today, from their very inception. I've observed our nations mindset and mentality evolve through the decades and can say, i do have a fairly good grasp of our political, economical and social structure. What i can say, is that the minority that votes conservative needs to stop living in the past and look to the future, seek ways to be part of it rather than being dragged onwards by it. Comparing the life and the opportunities we have to what it was just 30 years ago and having had the opportunity to travel plenty, i can, without a shadow of a doubt, say that our life is absolutely amazing and the best, we've ever had, our political scene, albeit sometimes being a bit satirically childish, has done one heck of job, turning a decrepit, run down, resourceless and corrupt tiny plot of land into a well functioning free democracy that is respected by much larger and wealthier peers. I maintain - everyone complaining about how terrible this that and the other is/are, really need to look in the mirror and ask themselves, who actually controls their life and take some bloody responsibility. There is no excuse, why any able-bodied person should complain when they live in a free, democratic, digitally and culturally open country, where sky's the limit. Get off your high horse and face the music!
Couple of corrections: 615 009 people participated in election voting out of 966 129 who are eligible to vote (so in total 63.7% of eligible people voted [more than ever before!] while the rest didn't want to vote for one reason or another). 365 695 of 1 331 824 people (2021 census) are either too young to vote or don't have citizenship to be eligible (ie. russians who live in Estonia but refused citizenship in the 90s because they believed Russia would invade anyways and they'd become the citizens of Russia - that's about 70 000 people according to the census*). Another correction is that EKRE actually lost seats in the parliament compared to what they had before. Not only that, Mart Helme (who by the way is not the leader of the party anymore - his son Martin is) lost 33% of his voters since the last election. He went from having 9000 voters to just 6000. And Martin went from 6000 to just 4500, a 25% loss. Also center party and EKRE stole the elections last time and made a coalition on their own despite reform's victory. But that goverment didn't last very long because EKRE managed to get themselves into a lot of scandals until center party leader Ratas was forced to disband the coalition. That's when the reform and center party coalition was formed. These two parties used to be enemies for about two decades but times change and neither one wanted a coalition with EKRE. Stealing elections this time is unlikely, because reform managed to pull more seats than before and they have a new ally in form of the Eesti 200 party which started in 2019 but didn't manage to win any seats last time but this time grabbed 14 seats. E200 has already declared that they want to join the reform party in the goverment. This would give the coalition 51 seats out of 101 in the parliament already gaining the necessary amount of seats to effectively rule, however they'll likely take another party into coalition to secure total domination. It could be Isamaa party, or social democrats, either way, the three way coalition would likely stand strong until next elections. *to elaborate more on the topic, gaining citizenship has become a lot more difficult since then, for example they need to be able to speak and write in estonian which they often refuse to do by principle. However the law still allows any child to get citizenship upon birth regardless of whom their parents are as long as the parents agree to it (some parents still refuse it).
@@michaelotieno6524 most countries in Europa are created as nation-states. Its writen in their constitusion. This is to prodect their heritage and language. Without this their culture will disappear. Governing multicultural states is also more difficult. Its difficult to create the feeling of unity. Just compare belgium to the netherland, bosnia to croatia, south africa to eswatini. Yes, eswatini is the poorer one but have you heard some eswatini farmer murdered based on their language or race. No. These things just don't happen in eswatini.
Riigikogu has hard "g" sounds, as noted elsewhere. The first part of this word "riigi" relates to the more familiar "Reich" in German. It means "state" or "realm". The ending "kogu" means something like "assembly" or "collection".
Holy shit, the US has given more aid to Ukraine than all of Europe? It annoys me that this is such a divisive issue, but hell fucking yeah, this is the kind of America I'm proud to be a part of.
Yes true. In this video tho its about who sacrificed the most. If the US for example spends 1 Billion on something nothing would change for you. But if we do its a big thing because we are small
"the US has given more aid to Ukraine than all of Europe?" To my knowledge, the figures are for aid that has been decided/announce, only some of which has already been delivered. I'm not sure if the order would change if only aid that has already been given would be counted. Maybe I'm a bit pedantic for focusing on your precise wording but it's still important to note that there can often be significant delay before the aid makes its way to Ukraine. Also note that there is a great deal of uncertainty of how to value military aid. It's not an easy task for an accountant to decide how to value e.g. a Bradley donated by the US or a T-72 donated by Poland (or something). But in any case, that doesn't significantly change the big picture which is that in absolute terms the US makes up a large portion of the aid.
Yes the phosphorus protests. USSR wanted to dig phosphorus but Estonians fought against it because of environmental reasons. This event kick-started the singing revolution and protests all around the USSR
Complex systems never break down because of a single cause, but Estonia's de facto economic reforms under Perestroyka, successful exploitation of the rouble inflation of late '80s, and relatively functional economic activism were probably strong contributory factors to USSR's eventual collapse. While the economic activism got supercharged by the Chornobyl incident, it's likely that the political organisation networks behind it would have been useful for building the independence restoration movement upon in the late '80s even without it.
This gives off strong “if u dun like it here den leave it” vibes that we normally see from right wing fascists. People can have the wrong opinion, that doesn’t mean they should leave. They’re still Estonian citizens.
And not even 6 months later, "Prime Minister Kaja Kallas is facing growing criticism after Estonian media reports revealed her husband's business ties to Russia, which will now be discussed by a parliamentary committee." Lol Blyat I think it might've been a win for Russia.
What do the E200 stand for? Seems to me like they had a massive surge and the biggest increase in votes, but you never mentioned anything more about them. Seems like they could be a natural partner for the coalition to be formed.
Its EESTi200 meaning Estonia 200. You see our nation is 105 years old. {around 50y spent under occupation} and im not sure what they do but i guess preserve Estonia and get us to 200 years old independent? Please anybody correct me if im wrong.
@@hasdagger1916 Well that certainly explains the name a bit more. As a non-Estonian I just googled it, and Wikipedia said "both economically and socially liberal" which sounds about the same as the biggest party, so I was curious about the difference. Also gaining nearly 9% after getting only 4.4 last election, basically tripling ones result, sure seems like a major story.
@@autarchprinceps They are fairly new and the Reformierakond has been around for a while. I think people just like Reform party more and know ehat they do.
@@hasdagger1916 You were quite on the money, they are new, just got in for the first time and yes, they are like a smaller copy of the Reform party - very similar views and ideas, with a bit more focus on taking the country on a more self-sustaining route, ie. green power, less pollution, more efficient governing of resources, also increasing base income and life standard for all through smart planning etc etc. If everything falls into place, the coalition will be heavily liberal and economy minded. And as @autarchprinceps said, it's a big deal, because it signifies what the voters feel and what it means is that, yes, we see the prices are up, yes we feel the pinch here and there, but F it, we'd rather live a bit more modest for a while, than let a nation be consumed by the evil of the east like it did us a while ago. We value freedom and security over luxuries every day of the week.
@@SideKickStudios Damn right. I got Friends in Ukraine and I will keep supporting them until the russians are out and life is somewhat normal again. Atleast safe.
4:35 It's good that the full share is shown. Otherwise, the EU share or refugee costs are often left out. You can be against the EU or consider military aid to be more important than aid to refugees, but I consider omitting these costs to be arithmetic tricks
There are other oddities in the source, such as not wanting to count "Ringtausch". I sometimes have the feeling Antezza at al. is somewhat politically motivated
Afaik they didn't "remove" soviet era monuments but relocated them. The tank pictured in vid got moved from out in the open, to a museum. Also ekre should just disappear, they are a laughingstock
Correct me, if I'm wrong, but you said "the strong showing of the EKRE populists" is surprising, but didn't they loose 1.7% in comparison to the last vote? And that in spite of the fact that the center party otherwise often supported by the Russian minority also lost even more votes, so they didn't even profit from that either by absorbing those votes? As a total outsider to Estonian politics, that seems like they didn't have a particularly strong showing, unless the last result was a total surpise surge never before seen and everybody expected them to disappear.
Basicially nobody cares who wins if its not EKRE or the Centre party. They are a bunch of russian supporting pigs and nobody likes them. execpt russians ofc. This was about showing them we dont want them. This is my perspective as an Estonian.
5:55 - how cool is that!! That small blue white flag with the red cross is the flag of the Votian Nation, a small finnic indigenous people of Ingria whose homeland is right across the Narva river, in the current border between Estonia and Russia. They and their neighbors Izhorians are actually very close ethnically and linguistically to Estonians but their History under Russiana dominance has been one of almost extinction. Now (2020) only around 100 people claim to be Votian and roughly speak their mother tongue. And that's actually an improvement from 2010. The EKRE is the Estonian *People's* (not National) Conservative Party, and is currently led by Martin Helme, Mart Heleme's son I was surprised you didn't spoke about the party that had the best result, in absolute terms - Estonia 200. It entered parliament for the first time as the fourth largest party (14 seats) and as a Liberal movement it can be the coalition party Kalla's Reform needs. Best wishes to Estonia from the other side of Europe, Portugal!
@Zaydan Alfariz: Finland has had more time to enjoy freedom. It declared independence from Russia in 1917, and has been a fairly typical European republic ever since, now for about 105 years. Estonia followed suit some two months later, and for a while, things looked up, but Estonia's republican form of government was disrupted by Stalin in 1940, and the following Iron Curtain isolated Estonia from the rest of the world for almost fifty years. It has had to do some quite hard work to catch up with Finland in terms of international fame since 1991.
@Geopolitiikka ja sota > Finland was the only democratic country bordering the USSR which put Finland in a unique political spotlight and gave rise to somewhat famous political concepts like Finlandization and the spirit of Helsinki. Someone has to be that guy and note that Norway also has a border, so it might as well be me :D
The English translation of EKRE is The Conservative People's Party of Estonia, which draws parallels to a few "people's republics", which are very authoritarian.
@@intervrt They are related in the sense that usually People's Republic implies (claimed or real) socialist ideology, though there are exceptions like the Donbass people's republics. People's Parties, however, tend to more often be center-right than socialist.
@@seneca983 I guess so, it's just that EKRE fits the bill of pretending to be for the people while being authoritarian, as all or most of the "people's republics"
If you live in Estonia, speak Estonian, not the language of an enemy country that once occupied your country and tried to force its language on you. It is obvious why this language is opposed. And if you are so Russian and not Estonian, no one is keeping you here by force. 🇪🇪
@Kalevic I don't know. My statement was there to clarify my impression I got from the video that Helme is populist/nationalist in your country. Thank you for answering.
commenting for engagement, but also as someone trying to move to the EU, im super glad that we're hearing more about actual EU countries, while i also do like the Ukraine updates i wanna know more about the other 27 countries / possible new members
As a russian speaking person born in Estonia I want to say that not all of us are complete morons, there are about 20% of very good and loyal to the government people that know estonian well, support estonian school reform and also support the reform party. I, myself am actually a member of Reform party so yeah just because that it happened so that person has russian as a mother tongue which to be frank I did not choose in the first place does not mean that I am pro Putin or pro Russia. I also speak estonian, english and ukrainian pretty well. Some german and finnish also 😄 So better listen to what the person has to say before judging. Love to all our beautiful land and people ❤ Elagu Eesti! 🇪🇪
It is good to have people like you here. But you yourself are saying that you are a minority. As it has need said here many times before, nobody has anything against Russians who respect Estonia and Estonian.
I am very sure you can. It's about MFAuthentication and your personal code than anything else. After all, British citizens can vote abroad (by post of course).
Yup. The VPN just encrypts the data between Peer to Peer, but the system on either end still counts your e-ID and the verification codes sent as unique, so it's actually very safe in that aspect.
As an Estonian, it's a great video overall, but I'd like to mention that EKRE actually had a worse showing than expected/feared overall. They lost s eats compared to the last election and Reform dominated as leaders, really. This may be due to the fact that the main topic going into the elections was both EKRE and Reform scaring their voters about what will happen if the other gets to power.
Commenting so your comment gets more views. Thanks for the insights
A lot of the time in round ups like this the generalise the Russian speakers in other countries as being in support of Putin and possibly the war. Have you noticed any shift in their thinking at all since the invasion, or are they of just the same minds as before?
American here, I personally want to see the Kremlin ousted for their role in interfering with our elections back in 2016, and was a bit worried they might try something like it with yours- I guess this time they’ve got something bigger on their hands to worry about; namely, the collapse of their military😂
@@hollister2320 XD I think that not only their military is collapsing… hehehe
And I'm also commenting and up-voting your comment so your comment gets more views. Thanks for the insights
🐉
As a European from Portugal, and despite all of our differences between different European countries, i must confess that i do love the place that Europe is at (except for braindead Brexit) and i'll never forget how hard it was to get here. I know it might seem extreme but, imo, people that can't sacrifice a little of their own individual lives (ofc taking into consideration certain basic limits) to help other European nations (and people from around the world) specially in a case of such direct abuse, agression and neo-imperialism as blatant as in the case of Ukraine... they're just hypocrites that can't look pass their own belly-button, greed and braindead prejudice. Happy that Estonia chose the other path and that if Estonia ever needs help, Europe will be there to answer the call!
I'm Portuguese too and I feel exactly the same way. For all its shortcomings, the European project might been one of the most amazing and ambitious political projects in history. A continent of dozens of different countries, with different cultures, languages and religions all coming together under an umbrella of shared values such as democracy, human rights and freedom, all different but all united in what truly matters.
It's kinda beautiful when you think about it.
@@guerreiro943 Yeap! It is by no means perfect (nothing is) but at least i feel that it strives for something that is not completely petty and short-sighted! I do love the small differences but i do love much more that is greater what unites us (while keeping our own small differences that can also bring us together as a worthwhile experience of life).
Os patriotas irão governar a europa.
Olha para o crescimento dos nacionalistas na maioria dos países europeus.
O teu sonho(na verdade o pesadelo) de um super estado europeu nunca acontecerá.
I guess i must be braindead then for voting brexit. I voted brexit for the same reasons i support ukraine now. I support democracy and their right to retain it along with their freedom to exist as a nation. The UKs MEPs elected by the people were not representing the people. Unelected EU commisioners were. Creating the policies and the "peoples representatives" were there just to rubberstamp them through. Thats not democracy. However if the brexit vote had gone the other way then i would have accepted it and respected the peoples decision. Unlike some. I also respect all EU europeans if they choose to live in a more federal society. After all, they were all subjegated 80 odd years ago. The uk never was so perhaps thats why we are more protective of our democracy than others.
@@goncalooliveira7784 e já agora, não saias de casa não! Se não saires aí sim é que o "SUPER ESTADO EUROPEU" vai querer ditar as medidas correctas e o material para te fazerem as cuecas🤣
"Never forget the way Moscow negotiates", Kaja Kallas warned recently on a TV set:
1 - Demand the maximum, including things you have never owned
2 - Give an ultimatum with terrifying threats
3 - During the negotiations, don't give anything away, because in the West there will always be someone to give something away
Provide me with one source (official document) where Russia made these requests during a negotiation.
@@meuko Is this a real comment? They talk like this out in the open daily, and France and Germany are weak links, or at least now is taking a harder stance the last few months, but still, they are the weakest in the alliance.
@@kev492001 What do you mean is this a real comment? And who is "they" who talk like "this"? If there's a comment in need of the question whether or not it's real, it would be yours. And what about France and Germany is weak?
@@kev492001 Weakest of the Alliance Germany giving the most support in the world to Ukraine, second only to big federal state US.
You had Hungary right there at weakest link but went for the easy online propaganda.
Also no wonder Germany would be shifting gears after finding out that none other than the US and Norway destroyed the pipelines lol... I'd do too.
EKRE Running on a "let's not help Ukraine" platform in Estonia of all places must be the most political suicide vibes we've seen this year lmao
And their braindead hatred toward NATO really made Reform the only right choice.
@@komojiro7397 definitly, but far right fascists have never been very intelligent
Estonia being a country that hates the russians just as much as the other baltic states do.
Alot but not enough to beat poland.
Not really, since they have alot other ideas that are quite popular among Estonian people's (that the current and previous government try to censor) that balance out the "let's not help Ukraine" and they are also very good at propaganda
@@THE_TRACKMAN Estonians on average are Pro-LGBT and not reactionary. I guess the only thing that could be mainstream is their nationalistic pride, but tis such a toxic form of it in that party tho
The not-so-obvious situation is pretty common in EU's east wing, Estonia is no exception. Recent "decisive victory of pro-EU, pro-western and pro-UA sentiments" embodied in our, Czech presidential election result is also not quite as clear as we (certainly I) would like it to be. The other side is by no means defeated, although it has somewhat retreated for now. The cost of living crisis bites us hard (you could've noticed that our inflation is even worse than Estonian) and people who can't see round the corner start to grumble.
In any case, congratulations to Estonia and generally, to all people who understand that certain values are far more important than being nice and cosy. History has a tendency to repeat itself and when we forget what's really important and start to take it for granted, we shall end up back in a situation when we'll sorely miss it.
As a westerner, it's disturbing to see in Eastern Europe, but it's ten times worse here. Ukraine is taking the cost for European and global security, and the people who refuse to recognise this are a big problem, on left and right.
@@雷-t3j As a matter of fact, I also deem it more dangerous, seeing it in the western countries---exactly because you guys don't have that, still relatively fresh, truly _personal_ experience with how it is to trade your freedoms and rights for that sort of upholstery-like mind-cell of authoritarianism and dictatorship.
Here, there are still quite a lot of people (mostly old people) who pine over the Communist past---because it was simply easier for them and many of them didn't quite manage to deal with the changes in the '90s. But a strong majority of people do remember (or are told by their parents) how much worse it really was. To put it simply, for each and every good memory somebody might have, there are a hundred of horrible ones... So I'm not very afraid of some sort of relapse, not at this point, certainly.
But seeing the degradation of democratic principles in the west really is worrying; exactly because here, we _know_ how clandestine it can be. Before you realise it, you're neck deep in trouble. And taking democracy for granted is exactly what paved the path to the Communist coup d'etat in Czechoslovakia in 1948.
Please don't make the same mistake.
@@vencik_krpo Well said. Exactly my thoughts. Putins worldwide propaganda with RT etc has been using one of the wests freedoms against us for the last 20 odd years. Namely, freedom of expression. Promoting nationalism and denegrating democracy whenever it can. Unbelievably many are being duped by it. Even from the political left. UK ex labour leader corbyn has appeared on it. Salmond ex leader of the SNP was actually hosting a show on it the day of the invasion. Apparently he wants to go back to it after the war is over.
There was now anniversary of Czechoslovak coup d'état 1948 while people chose pro Moscow government already in 1946. Just one election and 1200 years of connection to western nations was lost even now people refer to us as eastern Europe
@@vencik_krpo THIS! As a Pole I'm worried seeing how blind people are in the west. They take freedom and democracy for granted. My whole childhood parents and grandparents were telling me horrible stories of their lives (abuse by government, censorship, firing from job, because you don't worship the party, shortages of EVERYTHING, poverty... etc.)
This is all repeating itself. I hope Europe will stay strong.
As an Estonian, who lives in the capital, I can with high confidence say that Ukraine was not the main topic, the primary topic by a very long mile was not letting EKRE win, people were more worried about EKRE winning than what each party actually promised
Yes it is not a healthy mindset to worry only about that, but knowing who EKRE is, it is genuinely scary that they got so close
Thank whoever mighty is above for not letting them win
See "Mighty up above" oleme meie. Meie kõik kes hääletasid ja ei lasknud seda siga valitsema. Elagu Eesti
As far as I know, EVERYONE PRAYED to finally get rid of K. Kallas. She's the most hated person.
I'm sad to see how people are so blinded by Reform. They NEVER protect and help their own people. They TAKE. They say they don't have money for poor people, yet let's help Ukraine.
K. Kallas made the inflation much worse and made her own people to fend for themselves. Plus, Reformierakond has proven time and time again how they only care about rich people and big firms.
Yes, EKRE says sh*t Things, but at least they stand for their own people first rather than other country's and kissing EU a**
I think this will be the future for most EU countries, constantly worrying that right wing lunatics get in power and fuck everything up in a whim...
@@kelluke13 Lmao calm down. We shall not be egoistic and we need to help others. You know why? Becuase they help us too and there is a big fat hostile country next to us who wants to eat us alive any time. And when they try who helps us? Our allies. Also K. Kallas is popular. Shes hated.....by you i guess. Also how can you say Reform doesnt protect? They literally try to put 3% of GDP to military. So take your egoistic self back to reality because MOST Estonians wanted this. Man i love democracy.
Its just sad how little people like you know about politics and history. Any sane person with even a slightest knowledge about history knows that EKRE was only party in estonia that had geniuly Estonian intrests in mind. With 20 years of Reform dictatorship we as a nation have been destroied. The unity that we had against Soviet union is gone, our national pride which gave us the strength to carry on though occupations is gone. And all that because people like you know nothing of history. Its just sad that people like you destroyed my ancestral home, culture and nation, because you think western media dont lie.
Damn nothing on Estonia 200? Was hoping you'd touch on that.
Also I get the narrative of the video was more to focus on Ukraine and the key issues but I find it interesting you talked about how well EKRE did when they performed worse than last year.
They might be mentioned when we find out who will be in our next government
EKRE on pask.
''Damn nothing on Estonia 200'', that's because no one really likes them anymore and only dumb and naive people vote for them at this point, you can thank or blame the Russian invasion of Ukraine for that
For English speakers, it's pronounced "Kaya".
The G's in riigikogu sound like the one in words such as "get", and the I's are basically English E's.
English is a bizzarre langue, sometimes they don't know how to pronouce vowles of some english word.
@@Lorre982 its because they insist on having only 5 vocal letters.
@@rizkyadiyanto7922 Everything is inconsistent ye. For example the letter "a" can have like 3 or 4 different pronunciations. Car, tank, plane, train etc. It is often hard to describe how something is said because you need to use specific words as examples of letter pronunciation.
@@rizkyadiyanto7922 That also depends where you are in the UK. The north pronounce their vowels differently to the south. The vowels in the north south more continental European.
@Zaydan Alfariz w u t ? XD
1.3M did not go to the polls. That's the total population. Only 966k are eligible to vote, and out of those, only 615k actually voted.
You should know that TLDR does absolutely no checking or research before their videos they just wing it 😭😂 it’s quite bad
Only citizens can vote. The 0.3M, who are not eligible, are citizens of another country and some of the don't have citizenship at all.
If those people want to vote then they just have to apply for citizenship and do a test. Simple as that. However there is a catch. Estonian citizens are allowed to have only one citizenship. You have to forfit your previos citizenship when aquiring the Estonian citizenship. (There are few exaptions to that if you have Estonian ancestry).
And also people younger than 18 can not vote. Most of the non-eligible are adolesence :D
@@bababababababa6124 Read the comment below yours and do a walk of shame after shaming TLDR for not doing their job.
@@lawrencefrost9063 maybe you live in some fantasy video game because I don’t understand how his comment changes anything… that guy only confirmed my point that TLDR seriously does little research. How on earth can Estonias election have 1.3 million voters when that’s their entire population? That’s what TLDR said😂I’m seriously confused at your comment here
The way that you pronounced "Kaja Kallas" and "Riigikogu" was pretty hilarious. Also another thing I would like to add is that the Eestimaa Ühendatud Vasakpartei (Estonian United Left Party) was really unpopular until this election, they got 14k votes and they are notorious for being extremely pro-Kremlin.
To be fair you shouldn’t expect a random British guy to be able to pronounce Estonian words properly lmao
@@bababababababa6124 as a news reporter, there should be a system that address this, like better scripts or some more training.
@@konokiomomuro7632 I agree it's something to look into. Although I appreciate much more their content over their pronunciation.
Also, I see Jack being much less "random British guy" that someone who call themselves @bababababababa
he doesn't even try to pronounce names of people and cities correctly and I think it's very ignorant. This is what annoys me the most about him, besides his sometimes oversimplified or even inaccurate presentation of things. I started watching this channel because of the other blonde guy, but he doesn't seem to appear anymore.
The one thing English speakers should learn, is that they speak one of the very few languages that do not pronounce the J with a Y sound. So they should always choose the Y sound when reading any foreign words with a J.
Estonia is awesome! Respect from your Northern buddies.
As an Estonian myself Im really glad that you covered estonian elections. I loved the video but would like to point out certain things.
-At the start of the video you said that 1.3 million estonians went to the polls. 1.3 million is the whole population of the country. The actual size of the registered voters is about 900,000.
-Important fact while covering these elections was the unusually high attendance. 63% of registered voters actually voted, which is a record. Many experts believe that this is due to the fact that difficult times have mobilized more voters.
-The winners of these elections were clearly liberals parties. Reformierakond(the winner of the elections) and also Eesti200(E200 had no seats before, now they have 14)
-The losers of the elections were clearly EKRE and Keskerakond(the centrist party), Keskerakond lost 10 seats. Mostly because the have always counted on russian voters to vote for them. But the russian voters have found other alternatives like Eestimaa Ühendatud Vasakpartei(in short its a leftist party with ties to Kremlin).
-One of the anomalies of these elections was Aivo Peterson, A candidate that was running in the Narva city district in the Eestimaa Ühendatud Vasakpartei list. Now his whole platform stood on one aspect: closer ties with russia and the support for "peace". The end of support for ukraine. That message was well received in Narva(most people that live in Narva are russians). He narrowly missed out in getting a seat in riigikogu. As an Estonian I say, thank god!(jumal tänatud!)
Jeez! Tells you, Estonians shouldn’t trust ethnic Russians in their own country. 😅
Keskerakond lost 10 seats, Kremlin pals gained waaaaaaay fewer votes than that. Most of those votes went to E200. Somehow.
Sa oled taun, eestlasi on, ainult 900k peale natuke kuid ülejäänud 300k on sibulad
hey, mind explaining me what happened during the campaign that made (according to politico) the conservative party lose 10% of it's polling votes?
@@Mr_Onion_TH-camThere are many reasons that may be behind this.
Firstly we need to understand the Estonian electoral system. Estonia has online voting, which means that a registered voter doesn't have to go to the booth to vote, he/she can do so behind a computer using ID card
Now the conservatives are the only political force that are openly critical of this system. They say that these votes can't be controlled, checked and that means the elections can't be trusted. And they tell their supporters not to vote online
That is a negative thing for the party, because although many of their supporters are older and used to voting on the booth, many of them are also younger and would like to vote online. But since the party tells them not to vote online, they may possibly not vot at all
Secondly the conservatives were the only political force that didn't clearly state that they wish to continue the support for Ukraine. They did say they support the Ukrainian force, but also said for example that Estonia should close the borders for Ukrainian refugees. Now Estonian people have always been very supportive of Ukraine and I feel like many people were disappointed by EKREs position
In summary there are many reasons for why the polls and the actual results differ. But I would say the two I mentioned are the main ones.
Thank you, Estonia! 🇪🇪
❤️🇺🇲
Thank you, Estonia, from Denmark.
Even though, you have a high inflation, you vote to support.
Some people will never learn..Banksters have to love estonia. Its easy to rob blind while people will celebrate their own impoverishment..
@@zygoptera666 Its fun too see western europeans speaking about inflation and hard times like they had a slightest idea. For example when electricity bill alone goes bigger than peoples pension or salary. Then to read thoose comments, stay strong and be good and support ukraine and crap like that.
@@kaljutamme7468 There is nothing wrong in supporting Ukraine actually. Evil must be confronted with Force. I believe in it... This electricity bill crap is not true actually. But... never feed a troll. I obviously failed on that...
@@zygoptera666 Yes there is nothing wrong in helping Ukraine as long as e dont destroy our own country and nationality but thats what we are doing. Takeing in in last year alone 100 000 immigrants is our countrys death, all the systems are collapsing or collapsed basicaly, we are not majority in our own capital, our second largest city is 100 000 people. Everything has its limits and unlike rest of the world we have by far crossed that limit all ready. For example germany sends something like 20-30 tanks to Ukraine which is roughly 10% of their tank force, we sent 80 out of our 100 artillery pices. See the difference here?
@@zygoptera666 Also people who cant accept the facts because those sound too sureal to them and then start to blame other in trolling and liers are worst. This electricity bill stuff is reality and you are just ignorant foul who dont even check for facts.
Situation in Estonia is complicated (and most of the problems stem from the Russian minority, obviously).
That said, Estonians know who they're dealing with. They will be most certainly unhappy at the risen cost of living but it's a price they are willing to pay to stay safe from the bear at the border.
As for the Russian minority, they are literally a bridge away from the great motherland and yet they choose to remain. One might wonder why...
Find it funny how half the things Euros say about Russian minorities nowadays would be condemned if you replaced them with Jews in the same sentence.
Perhaps they prefer to remain in the country where they were born and have lived all of their lives.
@@TheChessPatzer That is very understandable (i would too), but if any of them vote for a pro-Russia party, why (I probably wouldn't)?
This is incredibly xenophobic
@@homijbhabha8860 Sure. If you dismiss that these same people don't want to live in Estonia, but in Soviet Union (or by extension in Russia).
Never thought we would have an episode about my country!
@7:38 the place in the clip is Copenhagen Central Station, Denmark. Not Estonia FYI viewers. I think the editors are fully aware of it.
It might be in the future.
Maybe Estonians are planning to invade denmark this time so that a new flag will apear from the heaven to them.
*To get the joke, you need to know the creation story of tha danish flag*
I see many similarities with Latvia. We have the same voting system, roughly the same coalition. We don't have electronic votes, and Russian language was abolished years ago in public schools (At least Latvian was made obligatory in all schools), private schools remain divided.
You see that Estonia and Latvia are top-3 givers to Ukraine per GDP, Latvia has banned russian migrants, destroyed the biggest phallic soviet monument in the Baltics last year...
However we still have a large portion of pro-russians and conservatives in our government (at least former being in the opposition), which is sad for our future and prosperity. I'm genuinely happy for my Estonian vennad ja õed!
@@timsonins oo boy, You say you are my naber jet you say you are happy because Reform got to power again? Even in your own comment there is big problem. First for example, Reform party has been in power in Estonia for 20 years however unlike Latvia Estonia have been unable to lose russian education? How is that possible that anti russian goverment that has been led by one party for two decades havent been able to lose russian education? See some problem here? Second learn about history of that party. Its previous leader and current leader father Siim Kallas was one of the highest commmunist party member in Estonian from 1972 until 1990. It was on power during biggest Russian money loundery in history, It tried to lose draft, it tried to get visa free travel between Estonia, It lost military secret service, It tried to disband militia which is most of our military, It tried to give away 5,2% of our territory for free, It gave away Russian, soviet occupation compensation money and so on. Also unlike you we havent banned Russian immigrants, we have no background check on our eastern border unlike you. Its sad how people belive the lies they have been told by state media without looking facts and history. In truth in Estonia the biggest party is Pro russian party led by high ranking ex communist party members and that party have been on power for 20 years. Conservatives are the ones who are trying to stop all those things but media is lieing black to white and white to black. It just saddens me that most of the young people dont see it thorugh nor do real fact checking. Also fun fact that Pro-Russian party made official proposition in parlament to referendum question to join Russian federation.
@@timsonins you are russian so keep your mouth shut
@@timsonins Conservatives are good russian part isn't
@@egertroos in our (and most likely Estonian) case it's basically the same. Conservatives grew up in Soviet Union, so they try to maintain the Soviet Union values, just what Russian government is doing now to their country
1.3 million is the country's population, not voters.
When he said that I thought “ain’t that like their entire population” 😂
Unless babies are also voting then I don’t see how that’s possible 😂
So Estonia is not nearly as full as Britain is.
@@peterebel7899 Estonia is one of the most densely populated countries in the world. Fortunately. We have sth like 75% forest. A lot of nature. This is sth a lot other people in teh world find unbelievable in Estonia. "What, you can just go to the beach or the forest, it"s not private property" Yes, we can. I have a Belgian friend who spends all summers in Estonia because one can JUST GO to a forest or a lake or the seaside, and it is all right here, everywhere. Apparently in Belgium, and a lot of Western Europe, there is no accessible nature left. All private property. Estonia is basically all nature, and I love it. Very few people. In the capital Tallinn even there is a lot of space and people are not on top of each other.
@@helengolovina4597 Helen
I know. With this persiflage of dump Breiteers' phrases I did not intend to assault Estonia.
I am looking forward visiting your nice country with a camper van 🙂
BTW: This private property issue is not the case in Germany, Austria, Switzerland and many more central European countries.
Accès to woods is free, i.e. in Bavaria there is a dedicated law enforcing free access to lake shores (most of the stretch). Nature preserves does limit accessibility in some special places.
Congratulations to Estonia for another successful proportional election. Canada, the US and UK could learn.
I wish. 😔
🇺🇲
Canadian agreeing with you 100%.
Congrats Estonia! Stay strong! Greetings from Poland.
The party that won is liberal and very pro EU. Sadly it damned Poland before the war for having conservative values. Their representative also voted Poland to have sanctions in EU. Now that the war started they and their controlled media have shut up on talking BS on Poland. Estonian people like Poland and have similar mindset and values.
@@t2216 there is nothing wrong in having an opposing view. The Polish government has been run (since 2016) by populist, right wing, conservatives with many questionable and controversial policies. Some of them are obviously anti democratic. The question regarding EU sanctions in response is a legitimate one, in my humble opinion.
@@blind8686 In my humble opinion we here in eastern Europe should all stick together and not vote against each other. Poland people will vote themselves who they want - is it populist or who ever they like - it is their choice, not Estonia government business. This party foreign minister U.Paet was clearly huilo in media few years ago and voted against Poland. Current one U.Reinsalu is good and supports Poland and Ukraine.
@@t2216 i agree with you about solidarity. Being a good neighbors doesn’t mean we have to approve and applaud everything, but tolerate and accept most differences. Question is, where do we draw the line. If the common european values, like democracy, free press or independent judiciary are undermined by populist parties, the criticism is deserved.
Idiots ... you allow western propaganda trends to treat you as north Ukrian...
Love your channel guys, keep up the great work.
I think the people of Estonia are more concerned by the cost of living in a Neo-Soviet "union". Obviously the cost of living is a major topic, but a psychotic Putin right next door kinda forces the issue.
neo-soviet? what the fuck.
@@boarfaceswinejaw4516 Yes, Russia. The attempt to recreate the Soviet empire under God-Emperor Putin, one of the greatest failures in modern history. There is a reason why the saying "to do a Putin" means "to destroy everything you try to improve".
yup, going by the slogans used by parties during the election, only Social democrats had a mention of the cost of living, everyone else is mentioning either defending Estonia or helping Ukraine
@@GnosticAtheist
maybe im just more cynical, but i think putin's real reasons for invading ukraine has less to do with "re-building the empire" and moreso to avoid Ukraine spreading notions of democracy into russia through cultural proxy, and providing the EU with gas and oil from crimea.
@@boarfaceswinejaw4516 Gas and oil from Crimea? Could you elaborate? Its gas infrastructure was settled through Nordstream 1&2, both running from Russia itself into the EU. Also, taking over Crimea is a hard red line for Russia, meaning they'd declare total war if such an attempt was made. After the 2014 coup the notion and acknowledgment of this red line completely disappeared and so did the notion of many other agreements made between the two nations. Now also think about all the "military outposts" placed near Russian borders, with silos which can house nuclear ballistic missiles which are able to reach Moscow in 2~5 hours; they don't house them, but they can be converted within the day! Ukraine also publicly stating that they want to join NATO is another reason for this whole ordeal, both the US and multiple European leaders (including Estonia's big mouthed leader) have stated that they're willing to support the retaking of Crimea, which, again, is a hard red line, which would literally lead us into a nuclear war IF Ukraine was allowed into the EU AND the plans were set into motion. NATO's aggressive expansion also breaks many longstanding agreements. Also take into account the fact that since 2014, Ukraine has been increasing its military presence around Donbass by an extreme margin, constantly shelling Russian citizens, do you still, after all this, really think that that's his reason for the invasion? I'm surprised it didn't happen any sooner!
Dident expect you guys to cover this but man im glad you did ^^
"riidžikugu", i love it! 😄
Riidžikügüü
Then you'll also love the Australian pronounciation of _Ridgerikokoo!_
1,3m people didn't vote, that's the countries entire population
Whats with all the ceremonial government leaders in Europe? Feels weird for politicians to be talking about reducing Ukraine support due to the cost of living crisis, while there are government positions specifically built to not do anything
To be honest, these roles are such that cancelling them would save 0,001% of what is needed to tackle the cost of living crisis. Plus, they are not totally ceremonial as they are able to dissolve parliament and call for new elections, although they only do that when it is needed, not whenever, hence why they are referred to as having no political Power, or being neutral, or being cerimonial
@@MM-un3ob Its more an example of an issue in a lot of governments nowadays. Jobs for the sake of having jobs. People who really dont need to be there for their department to work, but stick around because it isnt a priority to make sure the government runs efficiently from a monetary stand point
A lot of their role is based around being the ultimate national representative, as head of state, and also being the person who can reboot the political system if it jams or if the government is drifting into dangerous policy territory
The ceremonial leaders are not government leaders. They are cerimonial national leaders.
The government leader is, by definition, whoever is doing the main job in the party.
It's important to have this position so there are checks and balances. They aren't actually powerless, just generally powerless... But they are still the most important person in the country de jure. Not necessarily de facto.
The ceremonial leaders of countries do have a role to play they often act as the face of nation they make public speeches at important events and so on they might not have political power but they to play an important role as someone how can deal with all the public events that dont require the actual government leaders attention and they can actually run the country, In Estonia the presidents position and dutys are constitutional so getting rid of them would be a public vote i believe
Thank you for putting your sources in the description
In Canada I wish we have the same system as you guys :( our elections are broken.
Ours suck, too. Winner-take-all systems breed extremist two-party politics. 🇺🇲
And ours aint? Our constituion say that elections take place first sunday of march. And must be some for everyone. However we have early voting that takes place whole week previous to first sunday and same time we have e-voting which is totaly different from paper voting. Example you can change e-vote but not paper vote.
There are trade offs to each election system. I quite like first past the post
The way you pronounced the names was funny af
Proportional representation system? Wow, not even UK has that, lol
Scotland does
Mate, the UK still has Monarchy instead of a President!... Wtf makes you think that the UK (that voted for Brexit as if a self-harm toddler was given a knife to play with, constructed on a mountain of lies) is a good example of Democracy? I guess that next you're gonna try to explain to me how the elections in the US are great and completely Democratic...
Nor does the USA have it.
In fact, the UK and France are the only countries in all of Europe that don't have proportional representation.
@@Apollorion France and Italy don't have it either, what's your point. The US cannot have it because each representative is elected at the state level, not in an overall national election, so you either win, or you lose, there's no way to break the congressional seat up for election into smaller parts to share it with the loser party.
Always crazy to me other countries have elections on a weekend… when most people dont work….
In Germany we have elections on sundays, cause then most people will be home and will have time to vote
If people work 10 hours per day they won't find the energy to go to vote in the evening. All elections in Europe are on Sundays.
@@shittymcrvids3119 In Brazil it is like that too.
@@shittymcrvids3119 In Germany people also work on Sundays you lazy human being
Kinda wish you had explained the rest of the makeup of the winning parties.
In total, We have The Reform party which is Central leftist, The Center party, The Ultra conservative party as the main ones that duke it out, but there's also the Social Democrats party (the red flower), Eesti 200, which is a liberal party and also a fairly new, their first time in the parliament and house and then we have the Fatherland party. Most of them are generally center leaning, but the worst of the worst is EKRE. They are the christian equivalent of the far right Muslims or close to it. They are a horrible bunch of people, they spew conspiracy theories, they think women belong in the kitchen and are baby factories, any LGBTQ people are perversions and proverbially deemed to burn at the stake as per god and NATO and the EU and all that is evil globalism and we should break apart and almost copying the MAGA people and Trumpisms, they do not accept the results and want to take this to court, claiming the e-voting was a fraud and the election was basically stolen etc etc. The funny part is, that they pushed hard for their followers to vote by ballot, which is common for their electors anyway, meanwhile, the liberal crowd that makes the country run for the most part, is all online focused, so no wonder they were leading in ballots and got totally smashed once the e-votes came in. The fact that centrist and left liberal parties won by so much is a testament that our educational system works and that we are one of the least religious countries in the world - Liberal parties here are mostly popular with educated, open-minded and generally average or above-average earning households, while as the conservative parties are generally more popular among rural people and the majority of seniors (left-over mentality from soviet times) who make pennies in comparison.
In a way, i think what the current new government should do, is look at those people who elect the ultra conservatives and see what we can do as a country for them. I think, they've been left behind somewhat, but it is hard to say, if it's by their own choice or due to lack in support.
Oh right Estonia has an input in the world
Never before has the Simpsons line,
"If you don't like you can go back to Russia!"
been accurate.
yup. We've been telling them for decades, it's not even that far of a travel, but for some odd reason, they stay. Not sure why, they Crave Russian rule, but don't want to go there for good.
I suppose that is one of the negatives about not letting 'pre-draft dodgers' into Estonia. They can't tell the sedentary Russians how bad it is across the boarder.
@@SideKickStudios listen here, we don't WANT to leave. We want to have the right to have our own culture alongside yours, which we are apparently not allowed to. We are apparently also not allowed to have education in OUR OWN language, which is a human right. Think on it.
@@aadmiral1689 Estonia is estonian land. We dont want immigrants here
@@aadmiral1689 That's a lot to unpack there. Firstly, no one has ever said, you have no right to hold your culture. If anyone did, that's not what most Estonians subscribe to. But you have to understand, that you not only have rights, you also have obligations, which is to uphold the law of the land.
Now, when talking about culture, you need to specify, what part of it you are talking about. Your songs, your language, your poetry, your cuisine, your ancestral ideologies?
Literally no one cares if you keep your culture, but it's the ideologies that we do not accept, because, well clearly, we can see what the russian cultural ideology means. Georgia, Ukraine, Moldova and many other countries know all too well. And as far as education goes, i do not honestly understand, why you would think you have any right what so ever to demand education in a foreign country that you or your parents or grandparents moved to, in YOUR OWN language. This is part of the ideology that has been fed to you by russian imperialistic mindset. Let's turn that table around - what would most russians say or think, if Estonian minority living in russia demanded, that they had Estonian language education part of the national educational system. We both know what russians would say to that. So why do you expect this to be a right for you in Estonia? For that matter, in any foreign country.
Ultimately a country can only be the best it can be, if those who came in adhere to local laws and culture and respect it, when they learn the local language, integrate into the society and contribute equally on all levels. Otherwise you're just a descendant of migratory minority demanding special rules of another country.
You can have your cultural backround, no one argues that, but you can't demand russian way of life and everybody to just dance around your wishes. That's not how it works.
If you want your culture and russian way of life - as already mentioned - you can find that on the other side of the border. You'll find you'll loose a lot of privileges, luxuries and rights over there, but hey, if that is what you want then it's the price you'll need to pay for 'russki mir'.
Fear is a really powerful motivator…
A great video, very well done, and seems to be quite balanced
That was not balanced, learn Estonian history and what parties have done, then you will see truth.
Nice video, but the clip of used at 3:35 is of the abandoned maternity hospital in Riga, Latvia not Estonia
I was wondering where is this place, thanks
I expected Sotsiaaldemokraatlik Erakond to do a bit better but it seems the people were really scared of EKRE and voted in droves for Kallas' Reformierakond.
Also, I have to say the pronunciation in this video is amazing.
Future notes for Estonian:
Ja is "ya"
In Gi, the G makes the sound as in the English word "Game", not as in "Giant".
These are the main ones I think you can get right. I'm not bothering with the rest.
And I is just English E
In the IPA transcription it is like that:
Kaja Kallas [ˈkɑ.e̯ɑˑ ˈkɑl.lɑs]
Riigikogu [ˈɹiː.kiˌko.kuˑ]
It was never a doubt that Estonia would want to keep their support for ukraine. So cheers.
Not Estonia 200. Its a shame for our nation. I am talking about how an woman Johanna Maria Lehtme led an charity organisation Slava Ukraini and she herself stole millions of euros from there to fund estonia 200 campaign. Really a disgrace.
My favourite thing about this channel is how the presenters seem to have no concept of the fact that different orthographies even exist. It's not even just them pronouncing it in an English accent, or struggling with letters like the spanish 'j' that don't exist in English, but them replacing perfectly pronounceable letters with whatever the sound would be if you just assumed that the word was English. Like the PM would just be Kaia or Kaya, which is easily pronounceable for an English person, but it's almost like they have no concept that 'j' can ever mean anything else.
Reejeekoogoo jfc
I love this. Please, never change.
The cost of living is high in my nation in EU as well. The price of food has increased a lot and it's hurting, financially. Even so, I don't want that to change, if it would mean less support for Ukraine. So what if my wallet is hurting. I'm not fighting on the front lines, risking my life like Ukrainian heroes. It's a small price to pay, barely worth mentioning. Slava Ukraini! 🇸🇪❤🇺🇦
Sadly it feels like most of the world struggles with cost of living
So you would literally starve to death as long as you support 'em slavs?
Couldn't agree more, thats what i was saying in my circles, small price to pay!
It is a small price to pay until the peasants rebel.
@@gothicgolem2947 Just repeat the same demented politics and get the same results...Go look at original comment for a reason why.
As an Estonian, i can say this is a great overview. Only mistake is that, actually EKRE is now leaded by Martin Helme, not Mart Helme. Martin is his son.
This is good news for our region and for Baltic-Nordic unity 🇸🇪 🤝🇪🇪
Hahahhaha the what 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 as an estonian I must admit I have never heard "riigikogu" or "kaja kallas" spelled quite like that before.
7:38 that’s Copenhagen Central Station, not Estonia hahah
Correction: EKRE current leader is Martin Helme, the 1 named and pic are of his dad Mart Helme he was that party leader till July of 2020.
For simplicity's sake, they should be called the Mart in Helme and the Mart out of Helme.
4:40 Ukrainian refugees not "migrants"
I’m glad someone said this. Just because they’re European they are now “migrants” or “expats” but when they’re from the Middles East or Africa they’re now “refugees”. Typical
We're so brainwashed by the Fox News scaremongering machine, do people even remember the difference anymore?
In Britain both terms are synonyms ....
A refugee is a type of migrant (excluding maybe internal refugees).
@@seneca983 Really???
- "Internal refugees" are not worth to think about?????
- there is nothing voluntary about any refugee.
At this point the channel should be called TLDR news Ukraine
I love Estonia, protect this beautiful country at all costs. I visited Tallinn in 2017 and loved it. Greetings from Poland.
Tere Eestist
Don"t worry. We will protect it
@@helengolovina4597 sa eestlane?
@@egertroos-qh7hw Jah
@@helengolovina4597 Sul vene perekonnanimi
Katja kalles.. Im on the floor laughing like what
Salutes to Estonian people from Finland 💪🇪🇪🇫🇮🇺🇦🇪🇺
Good bless 🐻🇷🇺🇨🇳🐼 well done 🤗 😘
ASIAN SUPPORT 🇷🇺 RUSSIAN ❤️ 😘 ENERGI & ECCONOMIC
Sanna Marina and Kaja Kallas are two of the most attractive Politicians I have ever seen. No Simping, they are twice my age.
Great video!
EU, the USA, and other peace-loving govt must provide all necessary means to Ukraine
USA and the EU is "peace-loving"? You've gotta be sarcastic
@Ryley Nadhir Nobody except Russia is asking for a war!
@@ryleynadhir4685 "Si vis pacem, para bellum."
US not so much.
EU pretty much unless it's the balkans.
because balkans gotta be balkans.
@@ryleynadhir4685 the USA loves peace... If and when it's good for business.
Weird with some footage from Copenhagen central station thrown in there.
this is a low level propaganda channel
"1.3M estonians went to the polls" ARE YOU SURE ABOUT THAT?
That's a TLDR I appreciate.
Thank you for the video. Italian living in Estonia here. Just a couple of points: 1) Reform does not want to spend more on the cost of living issues but military issues are a different story; 2) it appears from your video that Russian-Estonians are generally pro-Russia. I would say only a minority of them, the rest is quite pro-Ukraine imho.
Firstly Italians have no place in Estonia because it's an ethno state. Secondly those aren't russian-estonians but russians you are estonian by blood
And also you foreigners should stay out of our politics, we have enough foreigners aka russians here
@@egertroos Firstly, Estonia is a member of the EU and a multicultural state. Secondly, your attitude smell like a typical “talupoja-mentality”. Thanks God EKRE lost this election and REF/200/SDE will rule the country. We do not need here politicians with medieval views.
@@alekseimorgunov254 Estonia is an ethno state not like US, Canada or Australia
@@alekseimorgunov254 Sibul ole vait
Why does their parliament look like a school room with a huge teachers desk
Funny to see how Estonia's politics are more or less the same as Finnish politics. We have a parilamentary election next month and the themes are mostly the same. How much debt to take and Ukraine/nato situation.
Estonia's budget is 3% in negative right now. If one would exclude foreign investments then it would be 20% in negative. Now that Reformierakond won the election, we can wait for budget cuts all around everywhere and an increase in inequality.
@@Gaming4Justice Oh please, spoken like a true conservative. If you have enough braincells to rub together, you can make a life worth living anywhere under any circumstances, including Estonia. Maybe stop blaming the government in every shortfall of your life, get off your ass and get to work improving your own life? Conservatives and left leaning people constantly blame Reform party and expect the government for handouts on a silver platter, demonizing their constituents, the business owners and the main contributors to the economy as if they are bad. How do you not understand, if the businesses get linched by the government and spending is increased for the ones who can't get their sh*t together, then who's gonna foot the bill? Where's the money coming from exactly? It doesn't just magically appear out of thin air, it's the business that generates the bulk of those tax euros that pay for most of everything.
Equality/inequality exists in your head - If all you do is go to work for a average or sub-average pay and then spend the rest of your day watching TV or doing some other meaningless thing, your life wont get better. Instead, learn a new useful skill, put it to good use, hustle on the side, get good at it, start a business, bring value to the economy and yourself, grow, hire people, bring value to them.. That's how you 'cure' the inequality, not by blaming the sitting government, who ever it happens to be.
@@SideKickStudios Not even a conservative lol, didn't even vote conservative. I am sure you know nothing about the history or world view of all those parties.
@@Gaming4Justice I was born during the soviet Estonian times, i've stood in the Baltic Way hand in hand with our brothers and sisters as one, i've seen life on both sides of the curtain and have seen these parties become what they are today, from their very inception. I've observed our nations mindset and mentality evolve through the decades and can say, i do have a fairly good grasp of our political, economical and social structure. What i can say, is that the minority that votes conservative needs to stop living in the past and look to the future, seek ways to be part of it rather than being dragged onwards by it.
Comparing the life and the opportunities we have to what it was just 30 years ago and having had the opportunity to travel plenty, i can, without a shadow of a doubt, say that our life is absolutely amazing and the best, we've ever had, our political scene, albeit sometimes being a bit satirically childish, has done one heck of job, turning a decrepit, run down, resourceless and corrupt tiny plot of land into a well functioning free democracy that is respected by much larger and wealthier peers. I maintain - everyone complaining about how terrible this that and the other is/are, really need to look in the mirror and ask themselves, who actually controls their life and take some bloody responsibility. There is no excuse, why any able-bodied person should complain when they live in a free, democratic, digitally and culturally open country, where sky's the limit. Get off your high horse and face the music!
WOW What a great overview.....!!!
Couple of corrections: 615 009 people participated in election voting out of 966 129 who are eligible to vote (so in total 63.7% of eligible people voted [more than ever before!] while the rest didn't want to vote for one reason or another). 365 695 of 1 331 824 people (2021 census) are either too young to vote or don't have citizenship to be eligible (ie. russians who live in Estonia but refused citizenship in the 90s because they believed Russia would invade anyways and they'd become the citizens of Russia - that's about 70 000 people according to the census*).
Another correction is that EKRE actually lost seats in the parliament compared to what they had before. Not only that, Mart Helme (who by the way is not the leader of the party anymore - his son Martin is) lost 33% of his voters since the last election. He went from having 9000 voters to just 6000. And Martin went from 6000 to just 4500, a 25% loss.
Also center party and EKRE stole the elections last time and made a coalition on their own despite reform's victory. But that goverment didn't last very long because EKRE managed to get themselves into a lot of scandals until center party leader Ratas was forced to disband the coalition. That's when the reform and center party coalition was formed. These two parties used to be enemies for about two decades but times change and neither one wanted a coalition with EKRE.
Stealing elections this time is unlikely, because reform managed to pull more seats than before and they have a new ally in form of the Eesti 200 party which started in 2019 but didn't manage to win any seats last time but this time grabbed 14 seats. E200 has already declared that they want to join the reform party in the goverment. This would give the coalition 51 seats out of 101 in the parliament already gaining the necessary amount of seats to effectively rule, however they'll likely take another party into coalition to secure total domination. It could be Isamaa party, or social democrats, either way, the three way coalition would likely stand strong until next elections.
*to elaborate more on the topic, gaining citizenship has become a lot more difficult since then, for example they need to be able to speak and write in estonian which they often refuse to do by principle. However the law still allows any child to get citizenship upon birth regardless of whom their parents are as long as the parents agree to it (some parents still refuse it).
Why is Europe so obsessed with having single language or ethnicity nations.
Because that’s the distinction from rest off the countries without it you might as well have one country on a whole world.
Hell Estonia would have not existed without single language or ethnicity. We would part Russia as a back water county.
@@michaelotieno6524 most countries in Europa are created as nation-states. Its writen in their constitusion.
This is to prodect their heritage and language. Without this their culture will disappear.
Governing multicultural states is also more difficult. Its difficult to create the feeling of unity.
Just compare belgium to the netherland, bosnia to croatia, south africa to eswatini. Yes, eswatini is the poorer one but have you heard some eswatini farmer murdered based on their language or race. No. These things just don't happen in eswatini.
It's not stealing, it's a perfectly democratic thing to form a majority coalition of less popular parties. Hvaq EKRE though.
That pronunciation will be a meme in Estonia :D
rii ghee cog oo
would be more accurate
Cap off to Estonia, their proportional representation coalition parliament and their support of Ukraine 😊👍👍 🇪🇪🇺🇦
Riigikogu has hard "g" sounds, as noted elsewhere. The first part of this word "riigi" relates to the more familiar "Reich" in German. It means "state" or "realm". The ending "kogu" means something like "assembly" or "collection".
It's funny how he tries to pronounce our words
@3:33 - thats Riga, Latvia. :P
1.3 million Estonians didnt come to the ballots....only those eligible to vote
Actually, only 900k are eligible voters, and out of those only 600k voted.
What do you mean by EKRE improved? They lost seats
Holy shit, the US has given more aid to Ukraine than all of Europe? It annoys me that this is such a divisive issue, but hell fucking yeah, this is the kind of America I'm proud to be a part of.
Yes true. In this video tho its about who sacrificed the most. If the US for example spends 1 Billion on something nothing would change for you. But if we do its a big thing because we are small
The United States are indeed united, and so enact what Europe cannot.
"the US has given more aid to Ukraine than all of Europe?"
To my knowledge, the figures are for aid that has been decided/announce, only some of which has already been delivered. I'm not sure if the order would change if only aid that has already been given would be counted. Maybe I'm a bit pedantic for focusing on your precise wording but it's still important to note that there can often be significant delay before the aid makes its way to Ukraine.
Also note that there is a great deal of uncertainty of how to value military aid. It's not an easy task for an accountant to decide how to value e.g. a Bradley donated by the US or a T-72 donated by Poland (or something). But in any case, that doesn't significantly change the big picture which is that in absolute terms the US makes up a large portion of the aid.
Well, helping Ukraine is much better than bombing Iraq or conquering Afghanistan.
Yeah! You will pay a lot for that new isra*l-project.
Where have I heard this title before?
Was it not Estonia 🇪🇪 whom unlocked the technical key 🔑 to unlocking the 🔐 domino style effect 'dissolution' of the Soviet Union?
Yes the phosphorus protests. USSR wanted to dig phosphorus but Estonians fought against it because of environmental reasons. This event kick-started the singing revolution and protests all around the USSR
Complex systems never break down because of a single cause, but Estonia's de facto economic reforms under Perestroyka, successful exploitation of the rouble inflation of late '80s, and relatively functional economic activism were probably strong contributory factors to USSR's eventual collapse.
While the economic activism got supercharged by the Chornobyl incident, it's likely that the political organisation networks behind it would have been useful for building the independence restoration movement upon in the late '80s even without it.
😁😆
Helme looks like a generic 1970s Bond villain.
I am always impressed how English natives don't put any effort into learning how to pronounce "foreign" words
I wouldn't generalize *that* much. I do agree that it is noticeable among *media* how ever.
@@bjoardar geography now dude is the only one that I’ve seen putting any effort
Loving the pronunciations xd
4:17 “significant Russian minority who are more sympathetic”
Lol then move back it’s right there😂😂😂
Then why aren't so many pro-Ukraine Americans don't move back to Europe? It's right there, across the sea lol
Why move to Russia when you can bring Russia back to Estonia?
@@joeyjojojrshabadoo7462 because the actual people of Estonia don't want to be part of the new Nazi regime.
@@joeyjojojrshabadoo7462 why move to Russia if it's shite
This gives off strong “if u dun like it here den leave it” vibes that we normally see from right wing fascists. People can have the wrong opinion, that doesn’t mean they should leave. They’re still Estonian citizens.
And not even 6 months later, "Prime Minister Kaja Kallas is facing growing criticism after Estonian media reports revealed her husband's business ties to Russia, which will now be discussed by a parliamentary committee." Lol Blyat I think it might've been a win for Russia.
What do the E200 stand for? Seems to me like they had a massive surge and the biggest increase in votes, but you never mentioned anything more about them. Seems like they could be a natural partner for the coalition to be formed.
Its EESTi200 meaning Estonia 200. You see our nation is 105 years old. {around 50y spent under occupation} and im not sure what they do but i guess preserve Estonia and get us to 200 years old independent? Please anybody correct me if im wrong.
@@hasdagger1916 Well that certainly explains the name a bit more. As a non-Estonian I just googled it, and Wikipedia said "both economically and socially liberal" which sounds about the same as the biggest party, so I was curious about the difference. Also gaining nearly 9% after getting only 4.4 last election, basically tripling ones result, sure seems like a major story.
@@autarchprinceps They are fairly new and the Reformierakond has been around for a while. I think people just like Reform party more and know ehat they do.
@@hasdagger1916 You were quite on the money, they are new, just got in for the first time and yes, they are like a smaller copy of the Reform party - very similar views and ideas, with a bit more focus on taking the country on a more self-sustaining route, ie. green power, less pollution, more efficient governing of resources, also increasing base income and life standard for all through smart planning etc etc. If everything falls into place, the coalition will be heavily liberal and economy minded. And as @autarchprinceps said, it's a big deal, because it signifies what the voters feel and what it means is that, yes, we see the prices are up, yes we feel the pinch here and there, but F it, we'd rather live a bit more modest for a while, than let a nation be consumed by the evil of the east like it did us a while ago. We value freedom and security over luxuries every day of the week.
@@SideKickStudios Damn right. I got Friends in Ukraine and I will keep supporting them until the russians are out and life is somewhat normal again. Atleast safe.
4:35 It's good that the full share is shown. Otherwise, the EU share or refugee costs are often left out. You can be against the EU or consider military aid to be more important than aid to refugees, but I consider omitting these costs to be arithmetic tricks
There are other oddities in the source, such as not wanting to count "Ringtausch". I sometimes have the feeling Antezza at al. is somewhat politically motivated
Afaik they didn't "remove" soviet era monuments but relocated them. The tank pictured in vid got moved from out in the open, to a museum.
Also ekre should just disappear, they are a laughingstock
They destroyed my home towns ugly ass soviet pigs monument AND I LOVE IT ;D
It's not a Russian-speaking minority in Estonia, it's Russian minority
Good News!
Kaja is still fan of "The Handmaid's Tale" show.
Correct me, if I'm wrong, but you said "the strong showing of the EKRE populists" is surprising, but didn't they loose 1.7% in comparison to the last vote? And that in spite of the fact that the center party otherwise often supported by the Russian minority also lost even more votes, so they didn't even profit from that either by absorbing those votes? As a total outsider to Estonian politics, that seems like they didn't have a particularly strong showing, unless the last result was a total surpise surge never before seen and everybody expected them to disappear.
Basicially nobody cares who wins if its not EKRE or the Centre party. They are a bunch of russian supporting pigs and nobody likes them. execpt russians ofc. This was about showing them we dont want them. This is my perspective as an Estonian.
I guess the point is they should have lost far more of their voters. It was disappointing that they didn't.
5:55 - how cool is that!! That small blue white flag with the red cross is the flag of the Votian Nation, a small finnic indigenous people of Ingria whose homeland is right across the Narva river, in the current border between Estonia and Russia. They and their neighbors Izhorians are actually very close ethnically and linguistically to Estonians but their History under Russiana dominance has been one of almost extinction.
Now (2020) only around 100 people claim to be Votian and roughly speak their mother tongue. And that's actually an improvement from 2010.
The EKRE is the Estonian *People's* (not National) Conservative Party, and is currently led by Martin Helme, Mart Heleme's son
I was surprised you didn't spoke about the party that had the best result, in absolute terms - Estonia 200. It entered parliament for the first time as the fourth largest party (14 seats) and as a Liberal movement it can be the coalition party Kalla's Reform needs.
Best wishes to Estonia from the other side of Europe, Portugal!
Gotta love these pronunciations of Estonian words and names :D
The PM's name is Kaja pronounced as Kaya
The Estonian and Finnish systems seems much alike :)
When we got our freedom back we did lot of copying. Not just elections. Many laws in the beginning were pretty much direct translations :)
@@TheKingpool7 *copying.
Coping is what the vatniks are doing
@Zaydan Alfariz: Finland has had more time to enjoy freedom. It declared independence from Russia in 1917, and has been a fairly typical European republic ever since, now for about 105 years. Estonia followed suit some two months later, and for a while, things looked up, but Estonia's republican form of government was disrupted by Stalin in 1940, and the following Iron Curtain isolated Estonia from the rest of the world for almost fifty years. It has had to do some quite hard work to catch up with Finland in terms of international fame since 1991.
@Zaydan Alfariz Finland has more people and it is bigger. Estonia has no culture. It’s just a carbon copy of Finland
@Geopolitiikka ja sota > Finland was the only democratic country bordering the USSR which put Finland in a unique political spotlight and gave rise to somewhat famous political concepts like Finlandization and the spirit of Helsinki.
Someone has to be that guy and note that Norway also has a border, so it might as well be me :D
The English translation of EKRE is The Conservative People's Party of Estonia, which draws parallels to a few "people's republics", which are very authoritarian.
@Kalevic this is a pappa betalar moment
@@intervrt People's Parties and People's Republics are not related.
@@seneca983 people's republics aren't related to each other either, so what
@@intervrt They are related in the sense that usually People's Republic implies (claimed or real) socialist ideology, though there are exceptions like the Donbass people's republics. People's Parties, however, tend to more often be center-right than socialist.
@@seneca983 I guess so, it's just that EKRE fits the bill of pretending to be for the people while being authoritarian, as all or most of the "people's republics"
If you live in Estonia, speak Estonian, not the language of an enemy country that once occupied your country and tried to force its language on you. It is obvious why this language is opposed. And if you are so Russian and not Estonian, no one is keeping you here by force. 🇪🇪
Average Estonian Nazi
Cost of living issues means nothing if your country gets invaded, just ask Ukraine
Congratulation Estonian brothers and sisters!
So Mart Helme is your Orban - everyone has one..
@Kalevic I don't know. My statement was there to clarify my impression I got from the video that Helme is populist/nationalist in your country.
@Kalevic I don't know. My statement was there to clarify my impression I got from the video that Helme is populist/nationalist in your country. Thank you for answering.
@Kalevic I was referring to Orban, not directly to Pro-russian.
@@puhistagram Helme is nationalist but of course he supports Ukraine. Same for Poland they are nationalistic but they support Ukraine in every way.
@@puhistagram Helme isn't Orban
commenting for engagement, but also as someone trying to move to the EU, im super glad that we're hearing more about actual EU countries, while i also do like the Ukraine updates i wanna know more about the other 27 countries / possible new members
As a russian speaking person born in Estonia I want to say that not all of us are complete morons, there are about 20% of very good and loyal to the government people that know estonian well, support estonian school reform and also support the reform party. I, myself am actually a member of Reform party so yeah just because that it happened so that person has russian as a mother tongue which to be frank I did not choose in the first place does not mean that I am pro Putin or pro Russia. I also speak estonian, english and ukrainian pretty well. Some german and finnish also 😄 So better listen to what the person has to say before judging. Love to all our beautiful land and people ❤ Elagu Eesti! 🇪🇪
It is good to have people like you here. But you yourself are saying that you are a minority. As it has need said here many times before, nobody has anything against Russians who respect Estonia and Estonian.
Is it me or the Estonian PM is cute.
Riigikogu, I loved them in the 80's! I was really into New Wave.
Sorry for the silly question but could an Estonian vote with their ID with Nord VPN?
Yes
Yes. It does not matter what IP address you use. It's still fool proof if u worry about that.
I am very sure you can. It's about MFAuthentication and your personal code than anything else. After all, British citizens can vote abroad (by post of course).
@@siimtulev1759 nice. I will look at that video about e voting. See how much it cost to implement.
Yup. The VPN just encrypts the data between Peer to Peer, but the system on either end still counts your e-ID and the verification codes sent as unique, so it's actually very safe in that aspect.
1:49 I’ve seen maps of Estonia before but for whatever reason this is the first time I’m noticing that northern island looks like crimea reversed
4:32 can't believe how little actually the US support is percentage wise, I don't think they care about arming Ukraine at all.
first comment from Australia (perhaps the first anywhere?)
I wanted to beat you