Andrei Kalugin, an activist from Russia's pro-Kremlin youth group Nashi, was taken for questioning by police on May 22 after he donned a Soviet Army cape and stood at the former site of Tallinn's Bronze Soldier monument, in what Security Police said was part of a show for the Russian RTR TV company. Security Police superintendent Irina Mikson told BNS that the young man was a Russian citizen who had arrived in Estonia specially to stage the action. Nashi repeatedly said in April that if the soldier monument was removed it would send people dressed in Soviet Army uniforms to stand as living monuments at the Tonismagi location. A spokesman for the Citizenship and Migration Board said that Kalugin's tourist visa had been canceled and that he would be returned to Russia.
Former Estonian Interior Minister Kalle Laanet in February imposed a ten-year ban on entry into Estonia for three Finnish citizens suspected of connections with extremist right-wing movements, the daily Postimees reported on May 22. By Laanet's order Heikki Pihlajamaki, a former policemen, Pasi Suikki, who has studied history at Tartu University, and Harri Vertanen, who owns two apartments in Tallinn, have been put on the "black list" for entry into Estonia for ten years. The men have denied any connection with Naziism and have appealed to the new interior minister to cancel the ban. A friend of the men told the press that they are just history enthusiasts and that their dressing in Nazi uniforms and celebrating Hitler's birthday was part of a style party, and not connected to extremist politics.
A relative of one of the soldiers originally buried at the Tonismagi war grave, former site of the Bronze Soldier monument, has allegedly been found in the Rostov Region of southern Russia. According to Interfax the man is Victor Bryantsev (67), whose father, Captain Alexey Bryantsev, was killed in the autumn of 1944 in Estonia and was reportedly buried at the site. The man has declared his desire to rebury his father's remains close to his home and readiness to come to Estonia for that purpose. Earlier the Russian press reported finding a sister and a more distant relative of Lt. Vasily Volkov and daughters of Capt. Ivan Syssoyev.
The pro-Kremlin youth organization Nashi on May 21 started a week-long demonstration in front of the Moscow office of the European Commission to protest the arrest of Mark Sirok, a suspect in the organization of the riots that occurred in Tallinn at the end of April. Nashi activists hung a large bell on the scaffolding of the building and promised to ring it every quarter hour between 7 a.m. and 10 p.m. About 30 Nashi activists took part in the demonstration the first day, posing for group photographs and distributing leaflets with Sirok's photograph looking from behind barbed wire.
