DECEMBER 17, 2013
Estonian-Russian Twiplomatic Feud
Estonian President was “trolled” by a Russian diplomat on Twitter on Sunday, 15 December 2013. Estonian President @IlvesToomas retweeted a historic picture initially posted by Chris Glew, editor of EstonianWorld.com showing a British Royal Marine demonstrating a machine gun to Estonian troops in 1919.
Meanwhile the Russian Foreign Ministry (@MFA_Russia) tweeted a picture of the rock band Metallica at the Russian research station in Antarctica, named after Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen.
Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausenn was an “Estonian boy” as Toomas Hendrik Ilves pointed out.
The tweet drew a reaction from Sergey Nalobin (@SNalobin), the parliamentary counsellor of the Russian embassy in London. His original tweet has been deleted since, but was still available as a quote below:
The Estonian president reacted quickly to being “trolled on Twitter”.
The Russian Foreign Ministry also commented on the Estonian boy with a dig at Estonia’s citizenship laws.
Finally Toomas Hendrik Ilves questioned whether he should attend the Winter Olympics in Sotchi after being trolled on Twitter.
The Russian Foreign Ministry subsequently pointed out that this wasn’t the first time a head of state was trolled on Twitter by a low-level diplomat citing this British example of real trolling from early December. The Russian authorities have “indulgently ignored it in a twiplomatic way”: