HI! Portuguese here,
I was planning to go on ERASMUS next year and I was undecided if I would choose Estonia (Talltech) or Poland ( [Lublin University of Technology](http://www.bwm.pollub.pl/en-campusnews.en) ) and then this all Putin vs Ukraine came up and since Estonia has a history similar to the Ukrainian when it comes to Russia I kinda changed my mind and looked for other options, my question is if my fear of going to Estonia is realistic or not, even though Estonia is a part of NATO.
Thanks for the attention xD
11 comments
God you are thinking about this? If that happens it would be WWIII
No. Your fear is not realistic in the sense you are describing it.
You should consider universities in Russia, you will be safe there.
Estonia is just as far away from Ukraine as is Berlin. Would you be afraid to go to Berlin?
And Estonia has joined the EU, the NATO and pretty much every other alliance you can think of. If Estonia isn’t safe, then Portugal isn’t safe as well, because WW3 with nukes has started.
Most likely Estonia would be safer than other countries because Russia might hesitate to nuke us because a) the nuclear fallout would be carried towards St. Petersburg and b) 1,3 million inhabitants with ~20% Russians means that it’s a waste of perfectly good nukes.
I understand your worry, tho, but you’re not any safer in Poland, trust me.
If they attack us its WW3 and really does not matter where you are in Europe. Actually it might be better here, very few people and sparsely populated. Almost no dangerous wild animals or poisonous animals. If there is no power anymore there are wood burning ovens in all of the houses outside of major cities. Nature offers enough food to survive if you know where to look. All in all great place to spend your apocalypse.
Maybe the mods should sticky a post saying “No, Estonia isn’t a potential war zone”.
We saw such questions frequently even before the most recent conflict, so it would save us a whole bunch of typing in the future most likely…
edit:formatting
Considering Estonia is a member of the EU and NATO with quite a lot of stationed troops from multiple ally nations, if estonia still were to get attacked
It’s WWIII at which point doesn’t matter and get to a bunker
Just FIY that both Estonia and Poland are in NATO and if we get attacked, Poland will also step into war, soooooo if your choice is between the two and you’re scared (although you shouldn’t be), you probably should just look elsewhere.
I’m going to pretty much copy past one of my previous comment:
Estonia is in NATO and EU not to mention Schengen and Eurozone. So there are a lot of parties invested that we are tank free in here. Like seriously, what would happen to Euro, the second most influential currency, if a member state turned into a war zone.
Putin is stupid but not enough to start a war with the most of the developed world. Even most of the local ethnic Russians wouldn’t be happy either if Putin tried something major.
There might be a risk of a cyber attack but since we have experience with it and host NATO’s Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence, causing a major chaos is exceptionally hard.
Edit: as for the history, besides the fact we were both in the ussr and the bit of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Estonia’s and Ukraine’s histories are very different.
Russia consideres Ukraine as somewhat of a birthplace of Russia(Kievan Rus) and Ukraine lost their war of independence after ww i. Estonia however became part of Russia only after Swedes lost to Russia in 18th century and even then the real power belonged to the Baltic Germans. When we gained independence in 1918 we kept it until WW ii and even then we weren’t internationally recognised as part of USSR and had government in exile.
If you are afraid of coming to Estonia because of war in Ukraine then I don’t understand how Poland would be better choice… If crippling fear, don’t go to neither places.
estonian here, go to poland.