Case 355 - Estonia: The First Battle in the Modern Disinformation War - Lessons for Democracies Fighting Hybrid Warfare

Jonas Heering and Heera Kamboj On the night of April 26, 2007, riots erupted in Tallinn, the capital of Estonia. Groups consisting largely of ethnic Russians, who make up approximately one third of Tallinn’s population, protested in the streets, clashed with police forces, and looted and destroyed stores. Two days later, once the violence subsided, one person had died, more than 150 people were injured, and 1,000 individuals were detained. Protesters took to the streets in response to the Estonian government’s announcement that it would move the statue of the "Bronze Soldier"—a Soviet war memorial—from Tallinn’s city center to a military cemetery in the suburbs. For ethnic Russians living in Tallinn, the Bronze Soldier served as a symbol of supposed “Soviet liberation”; for ethnic Estonians, it was a reminder of decades of Soviet oppression. The riots were fueled by false reports in Russian-language media outlets, which claimed that the statue, as well as several Soviet military