#anne in estonia

[grandmaster-anne]

24 January 2023 The Princess Royal, accompanied by Vice Admiral Sir Tim Laurence, undertook engagements in Estonia.

[aimeedaisies]

Princess Anne visiting Haith Group vegetable processing and handling machinery plant in Doncaster, South Yorkshire on 21st February 2024.

[princesssarisa]

Cinderella Tales From Around the World has now taken me through Finland, Estonia, and Russia.

*The Finnish Cinderella stories come in two main variations:

**One version starts out as a "Kind and Unkind Girls" story and then turns into a Donkeyskin/All-Kinds-of-Fur type of story. The heroine and her two sisters set out to seek employment at the king's palace. (Although in one version she's not related to the mean sisters, but just a beggar girl seeking work at the same time.) Along the way, they meet a sheep who asks to be fleeced, a cow who asks to be milked, and an old man who either asks them to wash him or louse his head, or who has fallen into a ditch and asks them to help him out. (Sometimes an oven that asks the girls to take out its bread is also included, while one other version has only the old man.) The sisters refuse to dirty their hands, but the heroine does, and the old man gives her a magic wand that will bring her finery whenever she strikes it against a rock. At the palace, the sisters are hired as ladies' maids, but the heroine is forced to be either a swineherd, a poultry-maid, or a scullery maid. But either she goes to church dressed in finery on Sundays, or just privately dresses up and walks in the garden sometimes, and the prince spots her. Either way, she loses a shoe, and the story ends in classic Cinderella style.

**In the other, the stepmother – though i'm not sure if she can be called that, since she never legally marries the father in this version – is really an ogress. She turns the heroine's mother into a sheep, then takes her shape and replaces her, fooling the father and abusing the heroine, who knows the truth. Then she asks the father to kill the sheep, and he obeys. But a birch tree grows either from three drops of the sheep's blood or from its bones after the daughter buries them, and the mother's spirit speaks to her daughter from the tree. When the prince gives a three-day banquet, the tree provides the girl with finery and a horse to ride. During the banquet, the orgress's own daughter – whom she had before she took the mother's place or is the heroine's half-sister – sits on the floor, and each night, the heroine throws a bone at her, breaking her foot, then breaking her hand, then putting out her eye; when they get home, the ogress lies that this was "foot-favor, hand-favor, and eye-favor," a sign of goodwill from the prince. (In one version, the ogress herself is the victim, not her daughter, and in Andrew Lang's bowdlerized retelling in The Red Fairy Book, the daughter is accidentally kicked by the prince and other guests.) Each night as she flees, the heroine loses something: first her hat, then a glove, and then a shoe. Every lady has to try on each of these things, and the ogress cuts her daughter's head, hand, and foot to make them fit. But in a proactive twist on the familiar foot-cutting plot line, the heroine herself (rather than a bird or a dog) calls out the truth. She marries the prince and gives birth to a son, but then the ogress turns her into a reindeer and has her own daughter take her place. But the reindeer comes back each day, and briefly takes off her skin to become human again and nurse her baby. Her husband soon finds out and breaks the spell by burning the reindeer skin, then has a pit filled with burning tar, covers it with cloth, and tricks the ogress and her daughter into stepping onto it, so they fall and burn to death. (Andrew Lang's version cuts this ending and just has the ogress and her daughter run away.)

*** I find the detail of the mother becoming a sheep especially interesting, because in Cinderella stories from many countries, the heroine gets her finery from the grave, bones, or body part of a dead companion, but it varies whether it's her mother or an animal. This version combines the two traditions.

** The two Finnish variants are sometimes combined, with the heroine abused by an ogress stepmother, only to be rewarded when she helps the sheep, cow, and old man.

**In Variant #1, the heroine more often works as a swineherd than as a scullery maid, so there aren't many versions where she has a nickname related to cinders or ashes. In just one version, where she does work as a scullery maid, is she called "Poropüka" ("ash-maid"). In another version where she's a swineherd, her name is Tüna, which looks funny to an English speaker, though of course it doesn't mean "tuna fish," it's a Finnish nickname for "Christina."

**In the handful of versions where the heroine is a scullery maid, she's sometimes expected to cook dinner by the time everyone comes home from church, but cruelly given only a single pea and grain of corn as ingredients. Nonetheless, when she gets home, a full dinner is magically waiting.

*This book also includes one Estonian version of the tale, Tuhka-Triinu ("Ash-Katie"), which is like a cross between Perrault's version and the Grimms'. Triinu's dying mother urges her to plant a rowan tree over her grave. In this tree on the night of the ball, a tiny "witch maiden" appears, and she turns an egg into a coach, mice into horses, a beetle into a coachman, and butterflies into footmen; but the magic only lasts until the cock's third crow at sunrise. The stepsisters also force Triinu to pick lentils out of the ashes, but the chickens do it for her.

*Moving on to Russia: while the most common Russian name for Cinderella is "Zolushka" ("ash girl"), a few regional versions give her other nicknames, such as "Chernushka" ("black girl," for the black ashes that cover her) and "Zamarasshka" ("dirty girl").

*There don't seem to be as many distinctive Cinderella stories from Russia as there are from other countries. Maybe it's because of the French influence in the Russian court, but the few Russian versions included in this book seem obviously based on the Perrault and Grimm versions. In Chernushka, the magical helpers are two doves, while in Zamarasshka, there's a fairy godmother. That said, a few of the Finnish versions with an ogress who replaces the heroine's mother are also told in Russia. There are other well-known Russian tales about abused stepdaughters too, although they don't follow the Cinderella pattern of magically-given finery and a lost shoe, but have their own unique storylines instead. For the sake of completeness, the book does include The Baba Yaga and Vasalissa the Beautiful, though I personally wouldn't describe those stories as versions of Cinderella.

@ariel-seagull-wings, @adarkrainbow, @themousefromfantasyland

[quotesfrommyreading]

The East is also where the Nazis had most vigorously pursued the Holocaust, where they set up the vast majority of ghettoes, concentration camps, and killing fields. Snyder notes that Jews accounted for less than 1 percent of the German population when Hitler came to power in 1933, and many of those managed to flee. Hitler's vision of a “Jew-free” Europe could only be realized when the Wehrmacht invaded Poland, Czechoslovakia, Belarus, Ukraine, and the Baltic States, and eventually Hungary and the Balkans which is where most of the Jews of Europe actually lived. Of the 5.4 million Jews who died in the Holocaust, the vast majority were from Eastern Europe. Most of the rest were taken to the region to be murdered. The scorn the Nazis held for all Eastern Europeans was closely related to their decision to take the Jews from all over Europe to the East for execution. There, in a land of subhumans, it was possible to do inhuman things.

  —  Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe, 1944-1956 (Anne Applebaum)

[beatrack92]

Estonian 4x100m team 🇪🇪

Mia Lisett Meringo, Anna Maria Millend, Grette-Ly Mäesalu and Ann Marii Kivikas

2021 European Championships U20 (Tallinn)

[rwpohl]

eminent domain, john irvin 1990

[jerseydeanne]

[eurovision-revisited]

Eurovision 2002: The Interval Act and Other Performances

It may be Christmas, but this blog does not stop! Here are some topless Estonian men self-flagellating with viht. Happy Christmas!

Yes, it's interval act time, and if there's one thing that a small stage is going to inhibit it's the intervals act. To squeeze that many performers into a small space, you have to leave the drummers off to one side. It's entitled 'Rebirth' and is performed by dance group Runo along with the ETV Children's Choir. It's cut from the same cloth as several previous interval acts - host country culture portrayed through the medium of modern dance along with some rhythmic music composed for the occasion.

It's not particularly memorable - in fact the English Wikipedia page for the contest doesn't even mention it, though it does have the memorable sauna related scene above which I'm sure we can all enjoy.

Leading off is a shortened reprise of last year's winning song by the artists Tanal Pader and Dave Benton, although there's no sign of 2XL. I hope they're there in the background somewhere. There's no messing about at the start of this year, there's relatively little preamble before launching directly into the contest.

Like in 1999, there's a mid-running order break for ads including what is probably the single most memorable additional musical number of the show. The two hosts star in what appears to be a little skit but turns into a full musical number. It makes the most of Annely Peebo's mezzo-soprano voice for a song poking gentle fun at just how many songs at Eurovision are about love. Marko joins in to demonstrate that he too can sing to the applause of the crowd.

A short pre-recorded video accompanies it and frankly, for a mid-running order break, this is as about as perfect as it gets. The song A Little Story in Music feels like a musical aside from a classic era Hollywood or Broadway musical, it's performed beautifully and it only lasts a couple of minutes. It's completely perfect and I like it so much I've linked it below.

[nerdsbianhokie]

Reading the World

In 2023, I challenged myself to watch a movie from every country in the world during the year, which I more or less succeeded. At the start of this year I decided to read a book from every country in the world (without the time restraint) and got a map to track my progress along with a challenge on Story Graph.

List of countries and books below the cut

Current count: 46

Afghanistan:

Albania:

Algeria:

American Samoa:

Andorra: Andorra: a play in twelve scenes by Max Frisch

Angola: The Whistler by Ondjaki

Anguilla:

Antigua and Barbuda:

Argentina: Our Share of the Night by Mariana Enríquez

Armenia:

Aruba:

Australia: Growing Up Aboriginal in Australia edited by Alexis West

Austria:

Azerbaijan:

Bahamas:

Bahrain:

Bangladesh:

Barbados:

Belarus:

Belgium:

Belize:

Benin:

Bermuda:

Bhutan: Folktales of Bhutan by Kunzang Choden

Bolivia:

Bosnia and Herzegovina:

Botswana:

Brazil:

British Virgin Islands:

Brunei:

Bulgaria:

Burkina Faso:

Burundi:

Cambodia:

Cameroon: The Impatient by Djaïli Amadou Amal

Canada: The Gift is in the making: Anishinaabeg Stories retold by Amanda Strong and Leanne Betasamosake Simpson

Canary Islands: Dogs of Summer by Andrea Abreu

Cape Verde:

Cayman Islands:

Central African Republic: Co-wives, Co-widows by Adrienne Yabouza

Chad:

Chile: The Twilight Zone by Nona Fernández

China: The Secret Talker by Geling Yan

Christmas Islands:

Cocos Islands:

Colombia:

Comoros:

Cook Islands:

Costa Rica:

Croatia:

Cuba:

Curacao:

Cyprus:

Czech Republic:

Dem. Rep. of Congo:

Denmark:

Djibouti:

Dominica:

Dominican Republic:

Ecuador:

Egypt:

El Salvador:

Equatorial Guinea:

Eritrea:

Estonia:

Eswatini:

Ethiopia:

Falkland Islands:

Faroe Islands:

Fiji:

Finland:

France: The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas

French Guiana:

French Polynesia:

Gabon:

Gambia:

Georgia:

Germany: At the Edge of the Night by Friedo Lampe

Ghana: Wife of the Gods by Kwei Quartey

Gibraltar:

Greece:

Greenland:

Grenada:

Guam:

Guatemala:

Guernsey:

Guinea:

Guinea-Bissau:

Guyana:

Haiti:

Honduras:

Hong Kong:

Hungary:

Iceland:

India: Coming Out as Dalit: A Memoir Of Surviving India's Caste System by Yashica Dutt

Indonesia: Of Bees and Mist by Erick Setiawan

Iran: Darius the Great is Not Okay by Abid Khorram

Iraq: Frankenstein in Baghdad by Ahmed Saadawi

Ireland:

Isle of Man:

Israel:

Italy:

Ivory Coast:

Jamaica: When Life Gives You Mangos by Kereen Getten

Japan:

Jordan:

Kazakhstan:

Kenya:

Kiribati:

Kosovo:

Kuwait:

Kyrgyzstan:

Laos:

Latvia:

Lebanon: Beirut Hellfire Society by Rawi Hage

Lesotho:

Liberia:

Libya: Zodiac of Echoes by Khaled Mattawa

Liechtenstein:

Lithuania:

Luxembourg:

Macedonia:

Madagascar:

Malawi:

Malaysia:

Maldives:

Mali:

Malta:

Marshall Islands:

Mauritania:

Mauritius:

Mexico: Silver Nitrate by Silvia Morena-Garcia

Micronesia:

Moldova:

Monaco:

Mongolia:

Montenegro:

Montserrat:

Morocco:

Mozambique:

Myanmar: Smile as They Bow by Nu Nu Yi

Namibia:

Nauru:

Nepal:

Netherlands: We Had to Remove this Post by Hanna Bervoets

New Caledonia:

New Zealand: Tahuri by Ngahuia Te Awekotuku

Nicaragua:

Niger:

Nigeria: Buried Beneath the Baobab Tree by Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani

Niue:

Norfolk Island:

North Korea: A Thousand Miles to Freedom: My Escape from North Korea by Eunsun Kim

Northern Mariana Islands:

Norway: Blind Goddess by Anne Holt

Oman:

Pakistan: Hijab Butch Blues by Lamya H

Palau:

Palestine: The Skin and Its Girl by Sarah Cypher

Panama:

Papua New Guinea:

Paraguay:

Peru:

Philippines:

Pitcairn Islands:

Poland: Return from the Stars by Stanisław Lem

Portugal: Pardalita by Joana Estrela

Puerto Rico:

Qatar:

Rep. of the Congo:

Romania:

Russia:

Rwanda: Baking Cakes in Kigali by Gaile Parkin

Saint Barthelemy:

Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha:

Saint Kitts and Nevis:

Saint Lucia:

Saint Martin:

Saint Pierre and Miquelon:

Saint Vincent and the Grenadines:

Samoa: Where We Once Belonged by Sia Figiel

San Marino:

Sao Tome and Principe:

Saudi Arabia:

Senegal:

Serbia:

Seychelles:

Sierra Leone:

Singapore:

Sint Maarten:

Slovakia:

Slovenia:

Solomon Islands:

Somalia:

South Africa:

South Korea: The Old Woman with the Knife by Gu Byeong -Mo

South Sudan:

Spain: Mammoth by Eva Baltasar

Sri Lanka: The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida by Shehan Karunatilaka

Sudan: The Translator: A Memoir by Daoud Hari

Suriname:

Sweden: Fire from the Sky by Moa Backe Åstot

Switzerland:

Syria: The Book Collectors: A Band of Syrian Rebels and the Stories That Carried Them Through a War by Delphine Minoui

Taiwan:

Tajikistan: The Sandalwood Box: Folk Tales from Tadzhikistan by Hans Baltzer

Tanzania:

Thailand:

Togo:

Tokelau:

Tonga:

Trinidad and Tobago:

Tunisia:

Turkey:

Turkmenistan:

Turks and Caicos Islands:

Tuvalu:

Uganda:

Ukraine:

United Arab Emirates:

United Kingdom: Poyums by Len Pennie

United States of America: Reclaiming Two-Spirits: Sexuality, Spiritual Renewal & Sovereignty in Native America by Gregory D. Smithers

United States Virgin Islands:

Uruguay:

Uzbekistan:

Vanuatu: Sista, Stanap Strong : A Vanuatu Women's Anthology edited by Mikaela Nyman and Rebecca Tobo Olul-Hossen

Venezuela: Doña Barbara by Rómulo Gallegos

Vietnam:

Wallis and Futuna:

Western Sahara:

Yemen:

Zambia:

Zimbabwe: We Need New Names by NoViolet Bulawayo

[peregrination-studies]

24 books in 2024

It is 2024, and I am here yet again with my bookish hopes and dreams!

I did this challenge last year (available here), and in 2022 (available here), and I'm STOKED to do it again this year! As is my way, I have been planning and revising this list for some time. My Goodreads overfloweth with ideas.

As always, if you have book recs, please send them my way! And, if you're participating in the challenge this year, I'd love to see your lists!

Without further ado, I gladly present to you my 24 in '24 book list:

Sci-Fi and Just for Fun :)

1) Randomize by Andy Weir (read April 2024)

2) Next by Michael Crichton (read May 2024)

3) Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick (read April 2024)

4) With a Little Luck by Marissa Meyer (read February 2024)

Environmental Science/Ecology/Books Relevant to my Studies

5) Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth by Buckminster Fuller (read April 2024)

6) Must Love Trees: An Unconventional Guide by Tobin Mitnick (read April-November 2024)

7) Scientifically Historica: How the World’s Great Science Books Chart the History of Knowledge by Brian Clegg

8) Letters to a Young Scientist by Edward O. Wilson (read November 2024)

Reading Around the World

9) The Eighth Continent: Life, Death and Discovery in the Lost World of Madagascar by Peter Tyson (Madagascar)

10) Everything is Wonderful: Memories of a Collective Farm in Estonia by Sigrid Rausing (Estonia) (read April-November 2024)

11) Willoughbyland: England’s Lost Colony by Matthew Parker (Suriname)

12) A General Theory of Oblivion by José Eduardo Agualusa and Daniel Hahn (Translator) (Angola)

Rory Gilmore Reading Challenge/Classics

13) The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde (read April 2024)

14) The Second Sex by Simone De Beauvoir, H.M. Parables (Translator and Editor), and Deirdre Bair (Introduction)

15) Gidget by Frederick Kohner (read November 2024)

16) Bel Canto by Ann Patchett

Recommended by Friends

17) Meditations by Marcus Aurelius (recommended by @hedonism-tattoo and many, many others)

18) Howl’s Moving Castle by Diane Wynne Jones (also recommended by many people now. @permanentreverie posted about it recently tho, and that was what really made me decide to include it on this list!) (read April 2024)

19) Tress of the Emerald Sea by Brandon Sanderson (recommended by @daydreaming-optimist ) (read April 2024)

20) The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux (recommended by @kaillakit) (read May 2024)

Eco-Psychology

21) Ecopsychology by Lester R. Brown

22) Against Purity: Living Ethically in Compromised Times by Alexis Shotwell (read April 2024)

23) Radical Ecopsychology: Psychology in the Service of Life by Andy Fisher and David Abram (foreword)

24) Sight and Sensibility: the Ecopsychology of Perception by Laura Sewall

Bonus

25) Bride by Ali Hazelwood (read February 2024)

26) Open Heart Surgery by Johanna Leo (read March 2024)

27) A Short History of the World in 50 Books by Daniel Smith

28) Candy Hearts by Tommy Siegel (read February 2024)

No pressure tagging: @daydreaming-optimist @kaillakit @permanentreverie @noa-the-physicist @silhouette-of-sarah @captaindelilahbard @senatorhotcheeto @the-bibliophiles-bookshelf @skyekg @of-the-elves @obesecamels @courageisneverforgotten @willowstea @its-me-satine @deirdrerose @notetaeker @theskittlemuffin and anyone else who wants to do this!

[grandmaster-anne]

24 - 25 January 2023 The Princess Royal visits Estonia: In her role as Colonel-in-Chief of The King’s Royal Hussars, The Princess Royal has visited the Regiment who are currently on deployment in Estonia. Read more about the visit here 📸: The Royal Family

[teal-skull]

Hi I saw your post about the phrase "se ei ole mistään kotoisin" and the book you linked looks interesting I just might get it 👀 I have an Amazon gift card that I want to spend on something fun and I was wondering if you have any Finnish book recommendations!! Either with translation or in simpler Finnish works too :D

Omg!

Ngl you were in my mind when I was writing that book recommendation :3 I hope you will enjoy it if you end up getting it! But keep in mind that because it is humorous it is not a deeb dive but rather scracthing the surface.

I will have to do a confession here that I don't read too much of finnish literature (something that I need to fix)

A general tip: try adding "selkokirja" (or selkosuomi/selkokielinen) to your search. Selkokirjat are books writen, or re-writen into simpler finnish than the original. (yle's website has a section "selkouutiset" where you find news in selkosuomi

Sorry, I wrote you a really long list, but maybe more is better so you can pick and choose.

-The moomin books by Tove Janson! Pick any one, Comet in Moominland and Midsommer Madness are my faves. They were originally written in swedish because Tove was swedish-speaking finn, so finnish editions are translations. There's also comics.

-Not Before Sundown by Johanna Sinisalo. English translation (and many other) is available of this one. This book is about a gay man called Enkeli (angel) who takes a baby troll into his house and tries to take care of it. But troll is part of a wild nature and the night. From tiny snippets we follow how this turns out. Finlandia Prize winner.

-The Unkown Soldier by Väinö Linna. This is THE Book in Finland. A finnish classic and the nation's "collective memory" of the Continuation war against Russia. Many movies made out of this one. According to wikipedia there is a new english translation from 2015, which is better than the previous but some of the localization has been critizied.

-The Purge by Sofi Oksanen. A very dark and depressing book set in the soviet occupation of Estonia. Haven't read this one yet but it is widely popular. Check wikipedia for more info.

-Ja hän huutaa: Splatterpunk-Antologia (Aaave Taajuus, 2014) I took you like violence and blood, well here's a collection of splatterunk short stories writen by different finnish horror authors. Havent read all of them yet, but the ones I have read have been... good in a way of "I wanted to be disgusted and I got what I wanted". Let me tell you, these shortstories are propably the most gruesome shit writen in finnish horror scene. All warnigns ably. You honestly just need to read the backcover. It's only available in finnish but I don't think the language will be too complex.

-Pyöveli by Anneli Kanto. Only available in finnish but it's a humortictic, grotesk story set in medieval Finland following the son of an executioner, a newly (un)happily married judge in Vaasa and a peasant determined to get a new, succesfull life.

- Magdalena Hai writes speculative finnish fiction

Some recomendations by my friends: -Ilkka Remes is a thriler writer but I couldn't find any of his works translated

-Childrens books: Risto Räppääjä -books (K makes references to him in few songs!) and Heinähattu ja Vilttitossu.

-Kepler62 by Timo Parvela (Scifi)

-Varjot by Timo Parvela (fantasy)

-Hirviöasiakaspalvelu, kuinka voin auttaa by Anni Nupponen (monster customer service), the publisher is Osuuskumma

-Leena Krohn writes horror/fantasy

Also some classic finnish books are:

-The seven brothers by Aleksis Kivi, the first novel writen completely in finnish. I read this one, at first it was fun but near the ending draged on way too long, sori Aleksi. You will see this one being referenced all the time.

-The Egyptian (Sinuhe egyptiläinen) by Mika Waltari.

-Minna Canth's plays like Työmiehen Vaimo or Annaliisa. They deal with women's position in the victorian era.

[princessanneftw]

Princess Anne and Vice Admiral Sir Tim Laurence’s gift to President Alar Karis during their meeting in Estonia on 24 January 2023 🇪🇪

[mariacallous]

Since February 24, 2022, no country has donated a larger share of its GDP to the Ukrainian war effort than Estonia has. Given the tiny Baltic state’s Soviet-era experience of life under Moscow’s domination, that level of generosity is not difficult to understand. The Insider recently traveled with two high-level Estonian officials on a tour of the front in Ukraine. The experience underscored just how deeply Russia’s other neighbors understand that the failure to properly arm Ukraine is already placing the European Union’s security in jeopardy.

“If all countries did what Estonia was doing, we’d be in Moscow by now,” Mikhail, the commander of a Ukrainian infantry unit currently deployed in Robotyne, told The Insider, only half joking. We’re meeting Mikhail at an undisclosed location to the north of his unit’s positions, roughly 20 kilometers behind the frontline.

It’s one of the last stops on a three-day tour of the front, with The Insider joining Estonia’s Ambassador to Ukraine, Annely Kolk, and Marko Mihkelson, Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Estonian Parliament. The trip coincides with what one Ukrainian officer described as the “toughest fighting since the beginning of the full-scale invasion.” As we saw and heard for ourselves, Ukrainian forces are suffering acute ammunition shortages while attempting to hold off an enemy that is stubbornly determined to advance, regardless of the human cost.

The trip has been arranged by a Ukrainian-Estonian group of volunteers, who run the “One Team, One Fight Foundation.'' They’ve been delivering non-lethal military aid to Ukrainian soldiers across the country for nearly two years. The foundation’s director, Dmitro Drey is an affable Ukrainian originally from Luhansk who speaks the heavily accented Russian common for a native of the Donbas region; its co-founder is Harri, an Estonian ex-soldier. Both men have traveled hundreds of thousands of kilometers across Ukraine delivering desperately needed military equipment to frontline units.

Most foreign dignitaries, understandably, will never come as close to the fighting as Drey and Harri do. Many of them would never leave Kyiv or Lviv to travel incognito in inconspicuous, unarmoured vehicles without a security escort. But for both Kolk and Mihkelson, the importance of speaking to Ukrainian troops in person — to get a firsthand understanding of the war — outweighs the not inconsiderable risk. For long periods of time, we were well within Russian artillery range, and the sound of incoming shelling was a disconcerting constant.

For Mihkelson, a reserve officer in the Estonian armed forces, speaking directly to Ukrainian soldiers enables him to better understand the situation on the battlefield, enabling him to be a more effective advocate for the increased provision of Western aid. For Kolk, trips like this one are part of her diplomatic mission. “I’m ambassador to all of Ukraine, not just the capital,” she says. “Sitting in Kyiv gives you an unrepresentative picture of this war.”

And the ambassador is right. Unlike last winter, this year Kyiv has experienced no blackouts and no loss of water supply. The atmosphere on the streets remains relatively calm. If it weren’t for the air attacks — which rarely penetrate the excellent Western-supplied air defense network guarding Ukraine’s largest city — a visitor could be forgiven for forgetting that Kyiv is the capital of a country fighting for its survival.

It’s different in Druzhkovka, 20 kilometers from the battle. Here the sound of artillery is constant, and yet, as in Kyiv, people continue to go about their lives the best they can under the circumstances. A mother and her child walk in a nearby park, while city maintenance workers prune trees. It is a surreal picture. Military aid is distributed to soldiers that have recently come back from their positions in nearby Chasiv Yar, and Kolk and Mihkelson get to hear about the situation in the trenches.

The situation is bleak. Nearly every unit we speak to says that Ukrainian troops are outmanned and outgunned, facing extreme ammunition shortages as they attempt to hold the line against an enemy with an almost suicidal determination to advance.

It’s not difficult to make the direct connection between broken Western promises and the current difficulties on the front line. According to Mihkelson, a lack of Western strategic vision is also to blame. “There’s no clear understanding of how this war should end in Washington or Berlin,” he argues. “We rarely hear that Russia must be defeated on the battlefield.” The constant slow-walking and incremental provision of aid, particularly from the United States, clearly frustrates him. “Why don’t they send some of their own F-16s? They have so many!” Mihkelson says, referring to the American decision not to supply their own fighter jets to Ukraine, instead relying on European allies such as Norway, Denmark, and The Netherlands. “Or the ATACMS missiles that are just sitting in warehouses waiting to be decommissioned.”

The limitations and conditions under which the West has supplied weapons to Ukraine also come in for criticism. In Mihkelson’s words, demands that Kyiv refrain from using Western-supplied weapons to strike targets inside Russia’s internationally recognized borders is akin to asking Ukraine to “fight this war with both hands behind their backs.” It is an opinion commonly shared amongst the Ukrainian troops we spoke to.

As infantry commander Mikhail noted near Robotyne, Estonia’s commitment to the Ukrainian cause stands out. The Baltic country of less than 1.5 million has donated a staggering 3.6% of its GDP in bilateral aid to Ukraine since January 24, 2022, easily the most generous country by this metric (for comparison, the United States has donated 0.32%). “We know this war is existential,” Kolk tells The Insider, explaining Estonia’s high level of support. It is an understanding that permeates every level of the Estonian government. Given the country’s direct experience of Russian imperialism, there is a widespread belief in Tallinn that if Putin is not stopped in Ukraine, Estonia could very well be his next target.

The same is true for Estonia’s neighbors Latvia and Lithuania, both of which have also donated significant amounts of military support to Ukraine while imploring their European and NATO allies to take the threat of further Russian aggression more seriously. For years, the NATO strategy for defending the Baltic states followed the “tripwire” approach — having small numbers of international troops forward deployed to the alliance’s eastern flank not in order to successfully defend against an invasion, but to ensure that any Russian incursion would risk inflicting casualties on British and American active duty personnel, thus bringing the full force of those two military powers into the conflict. But of course, in the event of an actual Russian invasion, the arrival of help from points further west could not have come immediately. “The ‘tripwire’ policy would have left our country occupied by Russian forces,” Mihkelson explains.

The experience of Ukraine under Russian occupation, along with the effectiveness with which Russia has used threats of nuclear “escalation” to delay Western aid deliveries — from the United States and Germany in particular, Mihkelson notes — have led the Baltic States to begin constructing a defensive line of bunkers and fortifications along their countries’ borders with Russia. The importance of Russia not being allowed to quickly take territory, illegally annex it, and then hide behind a nuclear shield is now well understood. Questions of whether an American President would risk nuclear retaliation to support a European NATO ally date back to the Cold War, and the defensive line currently under construction is an attempt to prevent that question from ever having to be answered.

Both Kolk and Mihkelson express frustration at how long it has taken some of Estonia’s allies to appreciate the danger Russia presents to its neighbors. “The West has massively underestimated the threat Russia poses, at all levels,” Kolk argues, paying particular attention to the Kremlin’s information warfare operations. “Here in the Baltics we’ve seen it for years. Russia tries to claim Russian speakers are ‘oppressed’ in our countries, but the truth is Russians living in Estonia have more rights than Russians living in Russia.”

Mihkelson highlights the pattern of Western passivity towards Russia that, in his estimation, led to the current full-scale war in Ukraine. “There seems to be little understanding in many Western capitals that Russia is fundamentally attempting to overturn the current world order,” he says. “This is not only about Ukraine,” he adds, drawing lessons from recent history. “We’ve seen continued weakness in the West’s response to Russia, from the invasion of Georgia, to Obama’s ‘red line’ in response to chemical weapons attacks in Syria. That was clearly a moment when Putin detected weakness.” He notes that, when confronted, Russia has almost always backed down. “We’ve seen so many ‘red lines’ Russia themselves have set down, and then backed away from, when they’ve been crossed,” Mihkelson says.

Towards the end of our tour of the frontline, we arrive at a position close to the town of Orikhiv, north of the highly contested settlement of Robotyne. As we pull up, an M142 HIMARS rolls out towards its firing position. In a testament to the ammunition shortage, only one of its six launch tubes is loaded with a GMLRS rocket. Several groups of Ukrainian soldiers arrive at the meeting point simultaneously. Two young servicemen who hadn’t seen each other for months hug upon realizing that the other is still alive.

Kolk clearly finds the experience emotional. “At that moment I felt I couldn’t hold back tears anymore. My own son is 21,” she says. “I cannot imagine him greeting his friends in such a way.” Except if Estonia’s continuing support for Ukraine demonstrates anything, it is that Kolk, Mihkelson, and hundreds of thousands of other Estonians can all too well imagine that, if Ukraine does not receive the military aid it needs, then the ambassador’s son really could be greeting his friends in exactly the same way in the not-too-distant future.

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Princess Anne as Colonel-in-Chief of the King's Royal Hussars, visiting the Tapa Military Base, in Tapa, Estonia, on 25 January 2023.

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Source: Anne Reiu photo

ℍ𝐚𝓵ｌ נ𝐀 𝔳คĻǤẸ - sunset in Estonia.