Foreign minister urges against travel to Russia in wake of Dugina murder

Minister of Foreign Affairs Urmas Reinsalu (Isamaa).
Minister of Foreign Affairs Urmas Reinsalu (Isamaa). Source: Priit Mürk/ERR

Minister of Foreign Affairs Urmas Reinsalu (Isamaa) has urged the public not to travel to the Russian Federation, in the light of recent provocation relating to the car bomb assassination of the daughter of a Vladimir Putin-aligned political thinker.

Reinsalu said: "In  connection with the aggressive anti-Estonian rhetoric on the part of the Russian Federation, which has grown significantly in recent days, I repeat the travel warning issued by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, to avoid any kind of travel to Russian territory."

Those Estonian citizens inside the Russian Federation at present should consider returning home, he added.

"If you are on a short-term trip to Russia, I urge you to seriously consider the necessity of staying there. Russia is a country waging war against Ukraine, and provocation against Estonian citizens cannot be excluded," the foreign minister continued, via a press release.

The ministry currently recommends (link in Estonian) refraining from travel to Russia unless absolutely unavoidable, and to avoid traveling to areas close to the border with Ukraine at any time.

Consular assistance for Estonian citizens and residents can only be obtained at the embassy in Moscow, the ministry adds, while obtaining assistance elsewhere would be very complicated and time consuming, the ministry says.

The Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) stated Monday that the assassin of Darya Dugina, who was killed in a car bomb blast in a Moscow suburb Saturday, had absconded to Estonia, a claim Reinsalu dismissed as "provocation" and in response to Estonia's support for Ukraine in the current conflict.

The FSB named the alleged assassin, Natalja Vovk, while Margarita Simonyan, editor-in-chief of RT, posted on social media a call for Russia's secret services to intervene in Estonia.

Dugina's father is Aleksandr Dugin, a political thinker thought be some to have assisted Putin in formulating his foreign policy world view, while Dugina herself was a pro-Kremlin journalist.

Whether the car bomb was intended for Dugin, since it was his car that his daughter was driving when the bomb detonated, has been the cause of speculation.

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Editor: Andrew Whyte

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