Estonia is looking to grant a regulator new powers to limit the broadcast of Russian and Belarusian state propaganda channels. But questions remain about whether the new rules will be enough for the age of digital propaganda.
A proposed law, which was debated in the Estonian parliament this month — and is expected to come into force at the start of next year — would grant Estonia’s Consumer Protection and Technical Regulatory Authority (TTJA) the ability to limit the broadcasting of hostile media services, which have ramped up significantly since Russia invaded Ukraine in early 2022.
On the front lines of the war — both geographically and politically — Estonia is moving to insulate its media sector from Russia’s ongoing campaign of hybrid warefare and disinformation in the EU. It’s one of the most proactive attempts made by a member state so far to directly counter foreign propaganda in the media through domestic regulation.
“We see that this systematic dissemination of propaganda via these channels may undermine our internal stability in the country,” said Indrek Ibrus, a professor of media innovation at the University of Tallinn.
Russian propaganda is not new, particularly across eastern bloc countries formerly controlled by the Soviet Union. Under the EU’s 2018 Audiovisual Media Services Directive (AVMSD) — which regulates services like TV and on-demand platforms — Latvia and Lithuania have repeatedly banned Russian state-backed channels such as RTR Planeta and NTV Mir Lithuania for breaching EU rules on hate speech and incitement to violence. In the wake of Russia’s war in Ukraine, the Czech Republic blocked Kremlin-linked sites like Sputnik.cz. Brussels followed suit with an EU-wide ban on RT and Sputnik in March 2022.
Existing EU rules under the AVMSD have equipped member states with tools to restrict harmful foreign broadcasts. But in an effort to more broadly protect media freedom and pluralism, the EU in May 2024 introduced the European Media Freedom Act, which goes beyond audiovisual media to cover print and online content.
“The ball was already rolling in terms of those kinds of interventions to address foreign channels that states felt harmful,” Sally Broughton Micova, an associate professor at the University of East Anglia, told The Parliament. With the EMFA, she added, “we might see more clear legal guardrails for what those kinds of interventions are going to be.”
Estonia & EU media freedom standards
Estonia’s pending legislation aims to build on the standards set out in the EMFA to further protect its own national interests. The country’s actions could set a precedent for how other EU member states combat fake news and disinformation.
The 2025 proposal would empower the TTJA to focus specifically on restricting broadcasts from foreign state-controlled media. While widely seen as a tool to counter Russian and Belarusian disinformation, the scope technically extends to any third country (non-EU nations) operating within Estonia’s broadcast space.
The latest version of the Estonian bill is significantly pared down from a former draft proposed in 2022, which was criticised for giving the regulator too much power. That earlier version would have granted the TTJA sweeping powers to monitor and enforce the “truthfulness” of news content — a move widely seen as incompatible with journalistic independence.
The updated proposal is “more in line with EMFA now,” Micova said. “It provides a justification and it institutes a kind of more proportionate way of handling it.”
Propaganda in a digital world
But where the law may meet its limit is in navigating the blurry line between broadcast and online content.
“Nowadays, influencers can also have large followings, and that information, disinformation, malicious information and propaganda spreads across various technological platforms — and we don't have the capacity to monitor all of them, because there are thousands of content providers,” Andres Jõesaar, a media adviser to the Estonian Ministry of Culture, told public broadcaster ERR in late April.
“We see that those people who are mostly affected by Russian propaganda, they still find ways to use or follow TV channels and online media banned by decision in 2022” that cracked down on Moscow-backed propaganda channels, said Ragne Kõuts-Klemm, head of the Institute of Social Studies of the University of Tartu and Estonia’s representative in UNESCO’s media freedom programme.
A draft of the Estonian bill seen by The Parliament deems an audiovisual media or radio service provider to be a legal or natural person who provides a television, on-demand audiovisual media or radio service, and has “editorial responsibility” over the content being broadcast and the way in which it’s disseminated. It also makes reference to individuals who provide a media service as their main professional activity — but unlike the EMFA it does not mention online content explicitly.
“The test will be in application of the definition in terms of what kinds of channels they define as needing to be limited,” said Micova. “Who gets defined as propaganda channels? What counts as an economic activity? And what kind of reach constitutes being a channel?”
Free speech questions
The law raises difficult questions about the extent to which Estonia, and other countries in Russia’s immediate sphere, can block propaganda while maintaining freedom of expression — and without providing material for Russian talking points.
Following Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, Ukraine banned Russian films, including TV dramas and documentaries, citing Russia as "an aggressor state." Russia also banned Ukrainian state TV for its side.
Moscow often cites what it describes as systemic oppression of Russian-speaking citizens in former Soviet satellite states as a justification for its war in Ukraine.
Whatever form the legislation takes, Russia will “definitely” find a way to argue that the Estonian government is making life hard for local Russian-speakers, said Kõuts-Klemm. “It is really complicated how to balance … media freedom and control and restrictions.”
Meanwhile, Jõesaar, the Estonian culture ministry media adviser, said in an emailed statement to The Parliament that any threat to democracy and media freedom stems not from its policies, but from Russia’s campaign of information warfare. “I firmly assert that Estonia will maintain its position as a global leader in media freedom,” he insisted.
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