She said that at a meeting of the OSCE Permanent Council on January 18, Russian diplomats raised the question of a campaign of intimidation and pressure on journalists unleashed by the Estonian authorities.
According to her, the Russian side again called on the OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media, Arlem Desir, to seek Tallinn to review its discriminatory policy regarding the media. Zakharova noted that representatives of international organizations, as well as Desir and OSCE Secretary General Thomas Greminger, spoke in defense of journalists.
“Once again, we demand that official Tallinn comply with the obligations undertaken by a sovereign state, a free state, and end its repressive media policy in violation of the fundamental principles of international law regarding freedom of expression, equal access to information,” Zakharova said.
The Russian Foreign Ministry hopes that the Estonian authorities will finally listen to the opinion of the international community, return to the legal space and stop the campaign they launched to exert direct pressure on the foreign news agency.
Earlier it was reported that employees of Sputnik Estonia were forced to terminate their employment relations with the editorial office from January 1, 2020 due to the threat of criminal prosecution.
On December 18, news agency employees received letters from the Estonian law enforcement agencies with threats of criminal prosecution if they did not terminate their employment relations with MIA Russia Today by January 1, 2020. Departments justify their actions with the sanctions that the EU introduced in 2014 against a number of individuals and legal entities due to events in Ukraine.