Baltic States – CIS, Estonia, EU – CIS, Legislation, Russia

"Since the Tallinn days in St. Petersburg are approaching, as far as I know the delegation came here to show these preparations. And one of the main goals was to broadcast the opening of the National Museum to advertise it on television in St. Petersburg and provide the city's residents with an opportunity to visit the museum," told an advisor at the Tallinn Development and Training Center, Toivo Keva.

He said that the group of Russian journalists consisted of 12 journalists from St. Petersburg, adding that they also planned to visit other museums.

Keva stressed that since all the journalists had long-term tourist visas they did not need an invitation from the Estonian side. He said that the foundation has organized such trips in cooperation with the Tallinn city government for eight years and no such incidents have occurred before.

According to Keva it is also strange that journalists representing the print media in the 12-member group were allowed to enter the country without the border officials checking if they had their pens and tape-recorders with them nor were they asked to present a work visa, like the visual media representatives were asked.

Estonian authorities on Thursday denied access to crews of the Russian television channels NTV and Life who had been invited to visit Estonia by the Tallinn city government.

"Today around 12:30 p.m. four Russian citizens arrived at the Narva border crossing point who wanted to enter the country using tourist visas. During the document check it became clear that the real reason behind their trip was not what was stated in the visa, therefore they were sent back to Russia," a spokesman for the East prefecture on Thursday evening.