Tallinn criticises government over Ukraine conference planning

Tallinn city officials have criticised the government’s plans for an international Ukraine recovery conference scheduled for next January, including concerns that heavy snow could disrupt the event, ERR reported. The Foreign Ministry said the arrangements had been thoroughly discussed with partners and that Tallinn had no reason for concern.

The sixth Ukraine Recovery Conference is due to take place in Tallinn on January 27 to 29. Kristjan Järvan, Tallinn’s deputy mayor responsible for municipal services and entrepreneurship, said the event should be postponed by several months.

Järvan said the timing was particularly problematic because similar major events had previously been held in June or July. At a city government press conference on Tuesday, he said he still did not understand why the end of January had been chosen.

“For reasons that remain unexplained, Prime Minister Kristen Michal and Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna have decided to bring the conference forward to January, before March,” Järvan said.

Mariin Ratnik, a deputy secretary general at the Foreign Ministry who is among those responsible for organising the conference, said its dates had been decided in cooperation with partners and selected to fit the international calendar of major events.

She said Estonia had discussed the timing with Ukraine and considered how it would align with other international events, including the Davos Economic Forum and the Munich Security Conference, as well as February 24, the date marking the start of the war.

Järvan said there was too little time left to organise the event successfully. He said the city did not yet know the venue or the speakers, while the programme must be approved by the Ukrainian government.

“There are four months left, and the current situation is that the venue and speakers are not known. If this major event were to fail in Tallinn because people had to trudge through snow, it would affect not only Tallinn’s reputation for years but Estonia’s international reputation as a whole,” Järvan said.

Ratnik said that such uncertainty was normal at this stage for an event of this scale, noting that the previous Ukraine recovery conference in Poland had taken place only a few months earlier.

She said the conference would consist of about seven smaller conferences, roughly the size of the Lennart Meri Conference, held at different but connected locations in Tallinn.

Ratnik added that Tallinn had sufficient experience in organising major international conferences and that the city had been involved in discussions about the arrangements throughout. She also said the city should have enough time to prepare for possible snow and ensure that its streets remained clear and traffic flowed easily.