Urmas Reitelmann, a member of the Conservative People’s Party of Estonia (EKRE), claimed on Thursday that his party, should it come to power, would have closed the local bureau of the Sputnik news agency “as a security threat,” but swiftly remarked that it was impossible to fully “shut” any media nowadays.
The statement was made during debates in the run-up to the March 3 parliamentary elections in Estonia. The anchor recalled that EKRE political program suggested shutting down information channels that “spread anti-Estonian propaganda,” and asked Reitelmann to specify which media outlets were meant.
Earlier, the editor-in-chief of Sputnik Estonia, Elena Cherysheva, complained about censorship in the Baltic country, where officials are barred from communicating with Sputnik, and the agency’s employees are denied accreditation to various events.