Russia

Three days of presidential elections in the Russian Federation are over. The people of the Finno-Ugric republics have once again backed Vladimir Putin, but this time he won a lower percentage of the vote than in the country as a whole - 87.33% in the Russian Federation.

The Russian Federation’s national language policy concept has now been handed over to the government. Ildar Gilmutdinov, deputy chairman of the State Duma’s Committee on National Affairs, expressed hope that the new concept will be aimed at preserving the various national languages.

Two former employees of the Foundation for the Preservation and Study of Native Languages of the Russian Federation, the head Vladimir Sobolev and his deputy Dmitry Fedorov, were convicted of sixty criminal charges and sentenced to six years of imprisonment in a high-security colony for causing damage of 44 million rubles, or more than 500,000 euros.

A total of 94 Estonian MPs submitted a draft petition to Riigikogu, the Estonian Parliament, to hold Russia accountable for its war crimes in Ukraine. …

The seminar "How to conceptualise Russia" was organised by Fenno-Ugria in Maarjamäe Castle in Tallinn on 31 May. The seminar was supported by the Open Estonia Foundation/Active Citizens Fund and it took place within the framework of the project "Democracy School for Finno-Ugric communities in Estonia".

On 25 May, the Russian-Swiss writer, Mikhail Shishkin, was the invited to talk at Open Estonia Foundation’s discussion evening in Tallinn, titled “What Will Happen …