July 18, 2026 — Delfi reports on the aftermath of the removal of the Jõgeveste monument.
Maria Zakharova, the spokesperson for the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, presented a protest to Estonia’s Chargé d’Affaires in Russia, condemning the removal of a Soviet monument located in Jõgeveste, Valga County.
The Estonian War Museum, which is responsible for the monument’s removal, told ERR that the Jõgeveste memorial in Tõrva Parish was removed a few weeks ago. Sorting of the remains is currently underway in order to reinter the fallen. According to the museum, 795 soldiers are buried in the Soviet Army mass grave in Jõgeveste, 726 of whom are identified by name.
“The Estonian authorities are continuing their sacrilegious policy of destroying Soviet memorial heritage. This time, a monument at a mass grave in the village of Jõgeveste, Valga County—where 795 Soviet Army soldiers and officers who liberated Estonia from the fascists during the Great Patriotic War (ed. note: World War II in the Russian narrative) are buried—has been destroyed,” Zakharova stated in the protest.
“The fate of the remains of our liberators of Estonia is unknown,” claimed the Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson. “There is no public information regarding the location of their exhumation and reburial. Descendants do not know where their grandfathers and great-grandfathers are now buried.”
In the protest, Zakharova referred to Jõgeveste as a well-known location in Estonia. “Since 1823, it has been the site of the mausoleum of Field Marshal Barclay de Tolly—a military commander who led the Russian Army at the Battle of Borodino, executed the maneuver that saved the army from destruction, and subsequently led the combined forces of European nations across the entire continent to Paris,” she described.
“In the exact same place, more than a century later in 1944, nearly 800 Red Army soldiers gave their lives for Estonia’s freedom on the banks of the Väike Emajõgi river. They were buried in a mass grave just a few meters from Barclay de Tolly’s tomb. Already during the Soviet era, the continuity of these generations who liberated Russia and Estonia from enemy hordes was emphasized,” Zakharova said.
Zakharova also made sure to mention the activities of Estonian Waffen-SS units during the Second World War.
The Russian Foreign Ministry called the removal of Soviet monuments “one of Estonia’s central ideological tasks.” Furthermore, it highlighted former Prime Minister Kaja Kallas’s 2022 decision to establish a Government Office working group to map Soviet monuments across Estonia. The Ministry noted that a protest regarding the removal was handed to Marek Ühtegi, Estonia’s Chargé d’Affaires ad interim in Russia.
“Russia decisively condemns Tallinn’s repeated violation of obligations under international humanitarian law regulating the treatment of the remains of the fallen and war graves, as well as manifestations of neo-Nazism in Estonia,” the protest states. The Russian Foreign Ministry noted that it will continue using all available bilateral and multilateral diplomatic tools to expose Estonia’s violations.
Russia utilizes the removal of Soviet monuments in its propaganda narratives as evidence of alleged historical revisionism, Russophobia, and the resurgence of Nazism in the Baltic states.