Speaking about the situation on Tuesday, Marek Liiva, head of the Narva border crossing, told ERR that at noon between 300-400 people were waiting on the bridge.

But, from the PPA's perspective, work continues as usual.

There are no longer long queues on the Estonian side. "When the bus brings people to Peetri plats, there's a little tail to the door from time to time, but generally there's no [queue] on the Estonian side," Liiva explained.

The line has been caused by the Russian border guard's slow pace, the official said.

"From our point of view, the situation is OK for now. All the major obstacles that are there at the moment are just on the part of the Russian border guards themselves and on their side," Liiva added.

No incidents at border since Victory Day parade

Eerik Purgel, head of the PPA's Eastern Prefecture, told ERR there have been no incidents at the Russian border since the Victory Day parade in Narva on Sunday (June 23). The border was closed on Saturday and Sunday.

"There are no incidents directly after the parade. If we look at border traffic in general, it seems to be better today at least, although there are still queues on the Russian side," he said.

Purgel said that on Monday, due to queues, almost 30 people did not manage to cross the border before it shut for the night. "We tried to get as many people as possible on the bridge, on the Russian side so to speak, but at some point we still had to make the decision to close the border crossing at 11 p.m.," he said.

Purgel said that PPA has tried to communicate with Russia regarding the problems, but Russia said there has been an increase in border traffic.

"If we look at the statistics, this is clearly not true," said Purgel. "On the contrary, border traffic has even decreased and is still around 3,000. These statements are not true."

Russia wants border open at night

"The Russian side is still trying to exert some influence. There are probably several options here. One of them could be that they want the border crossing point to be open 24 hours again, and that's why there is such pressure on the Estonian side," Purgel said.

Estonia started closing the border between 11 p.m. and 7 a.m. each night on May 1. For almost two months there have been no problems.

"Today we can clearly see that from mid-June onwards, the Russian side has, I would say, even deliberately slowed down the border crossing process, which is why these queues have started to emerge," said Purgel. "I think one of the things that Russia probably wants is for the border crossing to be open at night."

The PPA does not see a reason to extraordinarily close the border at the moment, as it did last week due to the queues. But it all depends on Russia.

"If they deliberately start to slow down the border control process, then we might just have no choice, otherwise the situation will be even more complicated – people will get stuck on the bridge or there will just be so many people gathering in Peetri plats and their health could be at risk, depending on the weather conditions and other reasons," Purgel said.

The aerostat, or observation balloon, flying on the Russian side of the border has not been seen on today. Purgel said this is an everyday phenomenon.

"This aerostat is such a multi-purpose device that it can be used for a number of purposes, and we can see that it will probably stay in the area for a longer period of time in order to monitor our activities in addition to their own border," added Purgel.

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