It's a pity, isn't it?

Israel, Lithuania and Latvia allowed Russia to open additional polling stations. Estonia refused

Russian-language media in Estonia are actively commenting on the refusal of the Estonian Foreign Ministry to Russia's request to open an additional number of polling stations for voting by Russian citizens living in the ER in the elections to the State Duma of the Russian Federation.

“This event is also important for the people of Estonia, because more than one hundred thousand Russian citizens live here,” commentators say. - This is the second largest community of Russian citizens living abroad after Germany. In total, 1,200,000 people will be able to vote in the Duma elections outside of Russia.”

On December 7, only 9 polling stations will be opened in Estonia: 4 each in Tallinn and Narva, and one more in Tartu. The Russian side, believing that this was not enough, asked Estonia to open additional sites. The answer was a refusal on a formal basis - the Estonian Ministry of Foreign Affairs substantiated it by referring to the provisions of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Missions.

At the same time, observers of the Russian-language press in Estonia note that “the voter outside the historical homeland turns out to be extremely passive. In the last elections to the State Duma of the Russian Federation, only 17% of Russian citizens who have the right to vote and live in the ER came to the polls in Estonia.”

However, this number, which is about 17,000 people, is a big burden for the available polling stations. At each of the 9 open polling stations, about two thousand Russian citizens will have to vote per day, despite the fact that there is no preliminary voting. Polling stations will be open for 12 hours, that is, every hour there will be 160 voters at one small polling station. In Narva, for example, all 4 sites are located at the same address. Observers conclude that "pandemonium cannot be avoided."

“With a request to increase the number of polling stations to the naturally necessary number, Russia turned not only to Estonia, but also to Israel, Lithuania and Latvia,” observers of the Russian-language press of the Republic of Estonia note. All these countries, with the exception of the Republic of Estonia, met the requests of the Russian side. “The state will not incur any special costs in this regard. But neighborly relations will not get worse from such a step, ”conclude the journalists of the Russian-language press.

According to IA "PLN".