So those looking for news of what's going on there are looking to neighboring Estonia, CNN's Scott Mclean reported from its capital Tallinn, for "Reliable Sources" Sunday.
"Eastern neighbors in Estonia have long been hooked on the programming coming out of Russian state TV," CNN's chief media correspondent Brian Stelter said.
Estonia, a country of 1.3 million people, has taken in 30,000 Ukrainian refugees since the war began. Like Ukraine, it was formerly part of the Soviet Union, has a large Russian-speaking population, and a well-founded fear of Russian aggression.
The majority of its population is ethnically Estonian but it has a large Russian minority. In the towns just across the Narva river, which separates the country from Russia, many older residents don't speak Estonian well, if at all.
"In the absence of a whole lot of Russian language media in Estonia, Russian state media has been left to fill the void, giving people a steady dose of Kremlin propaganda," Mclean said.
But now even that source has been cut off since the invasion. When Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, Estonia blocked many Russian news outlets and TV channels.
"Many people here [are] buying some systems to pick up Russian channels," said Vladimir Zavoronkov, a city council chairman in Narva, Estonia's third-largest city, which is located on its border with Russia.
Many are buying antennas in electronic stores to pick up Russian channels and the more technologically-advanced are setting up their own VPNs, he added.
https://www.cnn.com/2022/04/17...
