Estonia routes emails from .ru addresses through quarantine

Estonian state institutions will subject emails sent from addresses ending in .ru to additional security checks, ERR reported. The messages will still reach institutions covered by the measure, but more slowly.

Justice and Digital Minister Liisa Pakosta decided that, from the end of August, emails sent from Russian servers to many state institutions would no longer be delivered directly. Instead, they will first be placed in quarantine for additional checks.

Many people in Estonia, particularly members of the Russian-speaking population, still use email addresses ending in .ru. Courts have already asked participants in legal proceedings to stop using such addresses when communicating with them.

Pakosta said the measure was introduced to protect state institutions from cyberattacks. She said cyberattacks against Estonia had increased exponentially since 2022 and that a large number were clearly linked to Russia.

She added that Estonia had not been seriously affected by the attacks thanks to targeted efforts, while massive cyberattacks against the public sector had succeeded in Latvia and Lithuania. The new email measure was one of several steps being taken to improve cybersecurity, she said.

The emails will undergo additional checks rather than being blocked. The procedure will not apply to every state institution or local-government body, as this depends on the security rules each institution has established.

Pakosta said the change would not create additional bureaucracy for government agencies because the redirection would happen automatically at a central level. It will apply to state institutions already operating in the secure state cyberspace.