Estonian entrepreneur Urmas Sõõrumaa has withdrawn his candidacy for mayor of Tallinn, ERR reports. Earlier, Sõõrumaa proposed forming a technocratic city government that would follow guidelines from the Estonian Reform Party and the Estonian Centre Party (Keskerakond) until the local elections in October 2025. Reform’s current coalition partner, the Social Democratic Party (SDE), accused Reform…
The coordination committee of the European Commission’s Connecting Europe Facility has approved another EUR 295.5mn of funding for the Baltic railway project, Rail Baltica, LSM reports. Of the total, EUR 47.1mn will go to Estonia, EUR 153.5mn to Latvia, and EUR 94.9mn to Lithuania. The project coordinator, RB Rail, said that the funds would be…
Estonian ride-hailing and courier service company Bolt generated a turnover of EUR 1.99bn in 2024, which was up 17% from EUR 1.7bn in 2023, ERR reported. Ride-hailing services accounted for 82% of total revenue. The company’s operating loss reduced to EUR 87.7mn from EUR 94.3mn in 2023. Bolt’s annual net loss amounted to EUR 102.6mn…
A court in Estonia has found two Moldovan nationals guilty of an arson attack against a Ukrainian restaurant in Tallinn in January 2025, ERR reports. The two men were arrested in Italy in February 2025. One of the defendants told prosecutors that he was tasked by persons connected to Russian military intelligence (GRU) to firebomb…
Lithuanian prosecutors accuse three foreign nationals of desecrating a monument to anti-Soviet resistance leader Adolfas Ramanauskas in January 2024 under orders from Russian military intelligence (GRU), BNS reports. The three suspects, now under custody, are two dual Estonian-Russian citizens and a Russian citizen residing in Tallinn. The group smeared the monument in the southern Lithuanian…
Estonian Finance Minister Jürgen Ligi said that public outcry over inflation was misplaced, ERR reports. He argued that complaining about rising prices was “as stupid as cursing bad weather when you wake up in the morning.” Ligi stressed that most prices were not under government control, and that the government could thus neither cause nor…
Israel will soon open an embassy in Estonia, Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar announced, ERR reports. Speaking at a joint press conference with Estonian Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna in Tallinn, Sa’ar said that the opening of the embassy would strengthen economic and military cooperation between the two countries. Tsahkna noted that Israel was an important…
Four people have been arrested in Estonia on suspicion of large-scale health care fraud in the US, ERR reports, citing The Washington Post. The case involves nearly two dozen suspects from Estonia, Kazakhstan, and Russia. The group allegedly submitted fraudulent Medicare health insurance claims totalling around EUR 8.5bn for medical devices that were never delivered…
The Estonian Reform Party and the Estonian Centre Party (Keskerakond) will topple Tallinn’s current city government next week, incumbent mayor Jevgeni Ossinovski of the Social Democratic Party (SDE) said, ERR reports. He accused Reform’s mayoral candidate, businessman Urmas Sõõrumaa, of holding token talks with other parties to obscure the party’s plan to form a new…
