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Russia slams Estonian TV report on allegedly planned hybrid operation

The Russian embassy has criticized reports about Russian diplomats ‘mapping out bridges’, imaginary ‘five thousand young Russians ready to be mobilized against the Estonian state'

Policemen detain demonstrators during protests after a Soviet war memorial and the remains of WWII Soviet soldiers were removed in Tallinn in 2007 (archive) ITAR-TASS

Policemen detain demonstrators during protests after a Soviet war memorial and the remains of WWII Soviet soldiers were removed in Tallinn in 2007 (archive)

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Putin: Russia is not going to attack anyone

TALLINN, October 31. /TASS/. The Russian Embassy to Estonia has dubbed as conjectures a report of Estonian ETV+ on October 28 about an allegedly planned by Russia ‘hybrid operation’ in Estonia.

"Neither the authors of the footage nor the invited ‘specialist on Russia’ even took the trouble to provide as evidence anything but their own surmising," the embassy said in a statement posted on its website on Monday.

"Instead of producing evidence and facts, absurd tall tales are churned out about Russian diplomats ‘mapping out bridges’, about imaginary ‘five thousand young Russians ready to be mobilized against the Estonian state' and now - about even a ‘civil army’," it said.

The statement said the embassy could not leave unnoticed the footage about ‘a Russian threat’. The program "gave ‘an expert’ opinion about a certain hybrid operation that could be plotted in Estonia, for which the omnipresent ‘Kremlin hand’ was forming a civil army of as many as five contingents, taking under control information and propaganda resources, power-wielding agencies, business, opposition parties and setting up all but combatant cells," the statement noted.

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According to the diplomats, these cliches about ‘a Russian military threat’ are actively used "to achieve quite definite political goals: to increase military budgets, to expand NATO, to bring the alliance’s infrastructure closer to the Russian border".

"Security issues is a much too serious matter to be parasitic on it for the sake of somebody’s vested interests," it added. "All the more at our rather difficult times, when the whole global community should concentrate on real problems, the settlement of which will make the world more secure and stable," the statement summed up.

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