Russian-language chat rooms and online forums in Estonia have suddenly been filled with messages claiming that the People's Republic of Narva is about to break away from the rest of Estonia.
That makes Mayor Katri Raik sigh heavily.
"It's totally fake, complete nonsense. I have to scold anyone who makes a big deal out of this," Raik told the news site Politico Europe .
Like in Ukraine?
At the same time, it is not surprising that it is attracting so much attention. The parallels are easy to draw to Crimea and the easternmost regions of Ukraine, where sudden calls for pro-Russian breakaway republics preceded the Russian takeover from 2014 onwards.
Many have since feared similar demands, especially in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.
Estonia's security police, Kapo, still does not believe that Russian state actors are behind the people's republic fantasies in Narva. Instead, it points to individual Russian extreme nationalists.
"People are trying to appear more important than they are. It's a campaign in a make-believe world," Harrys Puusepp, head of department at Kapo, told Politico.
“Good at propaganda”
The authorities are nevertheless forced to take the information seriously. Both Prime Minister Kristen Michal and Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna have condemned the online campaigns.
"We've seen this tactic from Russia before, in Estonia and elsewhere. A cheap way to provoke," Tsahkna wrote on X in mid-March.
Narva is one of Estonia's most ethnically Russian cities, right next to the Russian border and is 90 percent Russian-speaking.
Mayor Raik nevertheless dismisses the idea that there is a broader desire to join the neighbor to the east.
She wishes people were better at determining what is true or not.
"Russia has always been good at propaganda. And it gets on my nerves when people don't understand that," Raik told Politico.
