The legal assistance agreement between the two countries automatically extends every five years, and to revoke it, one party must notify the other at least six months before the end of that five-year term. The current term ends on March 18, 2025, meaning notice of revocation must be sent to Russia before September 18 this year.

MPs Valdo Randpere (Reform), Kalev Stoicescu (Eesti 200) and Eduard Odinets (SDE) took the floor at the Riigikogu's main hall, during debating on the act.

Last fall, acting Justice Minister Kalle Laanet (Reform) said that any legal assistance agreement should be concluded with a sovereign nation whose legal system can be viewed with confidence. "Russia's judicial system operates via the Kremlin. We cannot trust Russian judicial authorities; they are biased, due to the Kremlin," Laanet said at the time.

The current agreement primarily relates to alimony and to relations between businesses, on a day-to-day basis. Up to now, Estonian courts had had to apply relevant Russian court decisions almost automatically, but the termination of the mutual legal aid agreement changes that.

To put it in formal legislative terms, the Riigikogu adopted the government-initiated act on the denunciation of the treaty between the Republic of Estonia and the Russian Federation on legal assistance and legal relations in civil, family, and criminal matters (362 SE), which denounces the legal aid agreement signed in Moscow in 1993 and came into effect in 1995 between Estonia and Russia.

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