Daisy Sindelar: I don't actually know how old you are. And, what's more relevant in that question is, I want to know the year you were born. What year were you born and where do you fit in with regards to Estonia's history?

Martin Laine: I was born in 1993 – so two years after Estonia gained independence. So that's a very interesting time to be born in. And the ‘90s for Estonia were really quite [difficult]. Even after the Soviet Union fell, we had to start from scratch. So we didn't have our own currency, for example. That meant that the ‘90s were very… we were a very developing country, like a third world country basically. And it's very interesting to grow up together with your own country. 

Can you tell me a little bit more about your parents and how their lives changed from the days under Soviet occupation to post-independence. What stories did they tell you when you were growing up?

Yeah, it's quite an interesting talking point at the moment. When I look at social media, I can see the young people in the U.S. praising communism. I just recently saw a poll saying that 36% of U.S. adults under 30 years old support communism. But it was awful. It was a totalitarian, a vicious totalitarian rule. The important part of my family story, for example, was that my grandfather was sent to Siberia as a 13-year-old kid. His whole family was sent together with him. His father died in Siberia. So basically the Soviets killed my great-grandfather, because he wouldn't have died if he wouldn't have been sent to those awful circumstances in the north of Russia.

Generations before me have experienced awful persecution. They've experienced basic ethnic cleansing. People don't understand that the Soviet Union was trying to ethnically cleanse countries like Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, [which] had their own identity. Everything related to our identity was banned. 

What a lot of people don't realize as well is the censorship that was going on in the Soviet Union. It's Orwellian – like, it's straight from ‘1984.’ You couldn't produce movies, music, books that were in any way meaningful. Tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of Estonians were killed, murdered, or sent to gulags. And Estonia is a very small example. I have to say that we are a country of 1.3 million people. So we are a very small country, one of the smallest countries in the world. Yet we have a very, very strong identity, which is really not related to Russia in any way. It's very different from Russia. Our language is totally different. So when some people think that we are [located] next to Russia, so we [therefore] must be similar to Russia – or that maybe there was some point to Russia or the Soviet Union occupying us – no. We are very different. We have a very strong, different culture from Russia.

My grandfather is still alive. He's one of the few people actually alive who remembers all that, having been a 13-year-old at the time. His mind is not in the right place anymore. He's living in a home. But he remembers Siberia quite clearly. Sometimes he doesn't even remember my face, but he remembers Siberia always. That's such a significant part of his growing up. So it's quite a powerful trauma that was left behind by the Soviets in our history.

That's quite extraordinary. Let's go back to you and your childhood in the ‘90s and the beginning of the 21st century. Tell me a little bit about what that was like. When did you first become aware of being Estonian and what that meant? 

Just recently, a few months ago, there was a song festival which is one of the main attractions of Estonia and Latvia, for example. So there is this event where 30,000 singers sing national songs and 70,000 people listen to them. So 100,000 people come together. And I will remind you that we are a country of one million Estonians. So 100,000 people – 10 percent of the whole population – come together to sing national songs, many of which were written during the Soviet times in secret, [because] they couldn't publish them at the time. So we can now sing those. This kind of tradition was like [an earlier period] when we were free, before the Second World War. 

So already in the second or third grade, I went to my first song festival and this experience is almost impossible to explain. The experience of singing together with 30,000 people songs about being Estonian. Estonia has a lot of tragic history in it and it's all in those songs, and they are so emotional. When 30,000 people are so emotional and proud about being Estonian, it's like this out-of-body experience, almost. So Estonians are very patriotic in that sense. And they have to be, because this country is new to us. So to be a country of 1 million people and have your own identity and your own state and your own land and place to be is quite something, it’s very important. And that's very important to keep hold of. 

I don't mean to put you on the spot and you don't need to sing, but are there any lyrics that you remember in particular from these songs that really stick with you?

There's this song that everyone wants to sing every time at the song festival. It's like a symbol for coming back home. It's a song about bees coming back to the beehive. And it's one of the most beautiful songs ever written. It’s like a bee flies from flower to flower and eventually he has to come back to the beehive, something like that. Everyone cries during that song, because it is so beautiful, especially when sung by 30,000 people. 

Tell me about your perception of the wider world as a child. What other countries loomed large for you? I'm going to guess Russia was one of them, but perhaps not the only.

We are on the other side of the world, so maybe Americans don't know that the U.S. is very important to us as well. Of course, for defense reasons, in 2004 Estonia joined NATO. I was very young at the time. So I didn't realize what the importance was. Now it's crazy to even think about if we weren’t in NATO. Our relationship with the United States started already in the Soviet times. As I said, there was massive censorship in culture, but people were managing to basically… when you take a western song for example, and translate into Estonian, and if the cultural official is stupid and doesn't recognize the song, you can play it on the radio. So, like, translating, I don't know, American rock music, for example. And there were people who had these secret radios they could listen to and they hacked the radios to listen to like western music or had secret tapes of western American music. Of course British music was very important as well, like the Beatles, for example. But American [music] as well, like Bob Dylan and artists like that. And the U.S. also ran Voice of America. And [Estonians] also hacked their satellite dishes in a way that they would catch airwaves from Finland, and Finland in the ‘80s was already showing American TV shows like ‘Knight Rider’ and all these campy TV shows. And people in Tallinn could look at those because they were catching airwaves from Finland in secret. So already back then these very campy American TV shows represented this air of freedom, like what life was like behind the [Berlin] Wall. 

You're rebelling when you're looking at American TV shows. It was very exciting. So all these kinds of TV shows represented freedom for the generation before, and in the ‘90s, of course, when we were free, all they ran were these American TV shows because people had already grown fond of them, like ‘The A-Team’ and ‘Knight Rider’ and ‘Dallas.’ They weren’t very good,  actually, but they represented so much value for us, there was so much symbolism for us in those shows. 

For my generation, English is already our second language and Russian is our third language, so [in that way] we also understood that we have to look to the West, not to the East. So already our generation was growing up with this mindset that we are looking at the West, not the East anymore, and we need to speak English, not Russian. And my generation already has quite proficient English language levels. The generation after that, of course, with social media – everything is in English. As a small nation, you don't translate anything to Estonian. When you go to France, you can see their TV shows are all translated into French. So the French don't speak really good English. But in Estonia, we don't have the capabilities to do that. So everything is in English. 

When you were in school, how did you learn about democracy or government? What did you learn about being a citizen of Estonia? Was that part of your school education?

Yeah, you call it civic studies, I think. You didn't have that every year. You started to learn about it from the seventh grade onwards and then in high school, which is from 10th grade to 12th grade, you had civic studies as well. I remember learning about liberal democracy, for example. That having separation of powers is an important part of liberal democracy. I remember studying that in high school, or even before that. 

But we did learn about those things and the importance of democracy, not only the importance of having your own state and being Estonian, but the importance of democracy itself. I feel like [at] the time when I was learning about it, you didn't realize why it's important. But now it's so obvious – that you have to not only understand democracy, but you have to protect it to protect your own existence, I feel. Democracy is so important. And not only democracy, [but] also liberal democracy. It doesn't have anything to do with a liberal worldview. It's like the system we in the West live in. Democracy is not something [where you just show up] to elect an official every four years. Democracy is something that's constant, and has to be protected constantly. And we learned all these things in school, and I would be quite surprised if Americans didn't learn about those things in school.

Let's talk about the United States. Have you been there?

Yeah, I was in New York a few years ago, just to see what it looks like and to feel it and to be part of it. Being part of something big felt quite interesting. And American people are also very different from Estonians – we [Estonians] don't like small talk. Americans speak very fast. They are very friendly and lovely people, usually. I know there are cultural differences in different parts of America, but I was very happy about my stay in New York. Maybe not all people are fans of it, but I was like, ‘I want to live here.’ Now, I wouldn’t want to live there, unfortunately. 

Why do you say that? 

Well, I'm not sure I would be let even inside the country for, I don’t know, criticizing Israel's [actions] in Gaza, for example. I'm not a pro-Palestinian activist or anything. I just think that an arrest warrant for [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu, for example, is important because that means that the arrest warrant for Putin is important. (Editor’s note: The International Criminal Court in November 2024 issued an arrest warrant for Netanyahu and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for alleged responsibility for war crimes and crimes against humanity in the war in Gaza. The ICC in March 2023 issued arrest warrants for Russian President Vladimir Putin and his children’s rights commissioner for alleged war crimes following the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.) And the U.S. is actively sanctioning the Hague court, which is crazy for me. 

And it feels like there are so many stories about immigrants and [how] immigrants are basically dehumanized in the U.S. And why would I want to be an immigrant in the U.S. currently, when immigrants are actively being dehumanized? 

How are you following the news in the United States? How are you following global news? Obviously, you're active on social media. You've made a few references to that. But I'm trying to get a sense of [what it’s like for] the average news consumer in Estonia – and I say that understanding that you're a journalist, so you're already not the average news consumer. What is the daily diet like when it comes to news about the United States?

We constantly have U.S. news on our front pages in our [Estonian] media. So you can get some understanding from there already. Maybe people don't understand that U.S. internal affairs are important to us as well. As I said, we are part of NATO. We are next to Russia. We are a country of 1 million people. Without U.S. protection, we don't exist, basically. And [if] the U.S. would implode or, I don't know, there are internal conflicts – that starts to influence that protection, for example. Or maybe there's a president who gives some very confusing statements about NATO protection, for example, or threatens NATO partners, for example – then, of course, we have to care about that, because it's the matter of our existence. So we cover and look at U.S. news constantly in Estonia. 

At first, when Trump came into power or was close to election victory [in 2024], we of course started to discuss in our society who's better for our well-being, Trump or Harris. And there were these contrarian voices in Estonia, [saying that] Trump is actually better. And I didn't believe it for a second, because I remember… it seems like many people have forgotten Trump's first term. Every scandal that he had during his first term or after the first term has been forgotten already. And there's revisionist history about Russiagate, for example, which has been deemed a hoax by the U.S. government now, basically. And it's not a hoax. It's very well proven. If you read the [U.S.] Senate reports, and [news] reports, there's proof there. There's public proof, there's public testimony from Russians themselves that they did it. So it's crazy to me that you can just deny that. And what's sad for me as well is that when you deny the 2016 Russian influence in the U.S. elections, you are covering for Trump for political reasons, but you are covering for Russia as well. You're denying that Russia is this malicious state that's constantly using hybrid attack methods against the Western countries and is malicious in nature. It's basically a criminal organization with nukes. That's how we understand it here [in Estonia]. So it should be handled like a criminal organization that should be feared.

For some reason, Trump has this denialism around him all the time, like [people who say] ‘No, no, what he’s saying is one thing, but what he’s doing is another.’ But then immediately, in the first weeks of his term [in 2025], he made a social media post about Ukraine that was crazy. (Editor’s note: In a press conference and social media posts in February 2025, Trump appeared to blame Ukraine for Russia’s invasion and accused Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky of being a “dictator” who refused to hold elections.) Every sentence was disinformation. And not only disinformation, but Russian disinformation – basically Russian talking points. I just can't understand that. I can't understand why he doesn't understand that it's in the U.S. interest to be on the side of everyone else, not Russia. Or even in between. I've always felt like if anyone understands what Russia is, it's the Americans – that I don't have to explain that to Americans. Russians are the bad guys in every American movie. So I’m quite baffled by this revisionism. 

One of the great speeches given in Estonia was an Obama speech that he gave in Estonia when he was president, and he basically said that NATO Article 5 is very important and ‘we [in the U.S.] are standing behind it.’ So clearly he said that we [in Estonia] were at peace, we were okay, we were safe. He directly said it. And now, if you want Trump to say something similar, you can't get it out of him. You can't make him say that NATO Article 5 is an important thing. I've never heard him say, ‘I'm standing behind Estonia.’ 

He said something about the Baltic states [several months ago] and it sounded like he didn’t understand what the Baltic states even are. He said it’s a very difficult region. How are we difficult? We’re not difficult at all. We’re currently doing better than the U.S. in many, many areas – in democracy, in education, in press freedom. We’re currently very happy and very prosperous countries. So we’re not a difficult region. But he said something like, ‘Yeah, we’re standing behind them,’ but I didn’t understand from that statement if he understood what he meant. And that’s the thing with Trump. You always suspect that he doesn’t understand what he’s talking about. It’s almost useless to even listen to him. You never know. And that uncertainty is not a great thing to be living through as a country next to Russia who has no power to protect themselves. 

I wanted to ask precisely about that, thinking about Ukraine and about Article 5. Are you concerned that if the war is not checked, if pressure is not put on Vladimir Putin, that he may seek to expand into the Baltic states, including Estonia?

What I'm fearful about is not a total war with Russia, [but that] maybe they’ll send a single rocket, for example, to test the NATO article. Maybe they’ll do a terrorist attack – something like that is more probable. And I feel like we are defenseless against something like that. I'm more fearful about that. And yes, I'm fearful about not only the U.S. There are many other NATO countries, like Hungary, that I don’t currently have much belief in.

We’re doing a story at the moment about this fear of war and how it’s affecting our society. And it's already having an immense effect. For example, foreign investors don't want to come to Estonia and build a billion-dollar factory here. ‘Maybe Russia will destroy it in 10 years. So why would we invest in a country like that?’

So it's affecting our economy already. People in Estonia are buying real estate in Spain, because they want to have a place to be when the war starts. So there's already active planning going on constantly, in case there's a war. Maybe many people don't realize that we’re living in the midst of something like that.

I'm going to ask you my final question. And with all of our guests, we end with the same question. You're in a country that has lived through totalitarian occupation, it has lived through a fight for nationhood and independence and democracy. Memories of those experiences are still relatively fresh. Your grandfather is still alive; he remembers his years in a Siberian prison camp. So my question to you, Martin, is what advice would you give Americans at this moment in their history?

I feel like the U.S. should compare itself to other countries and learn from them. Estonia is punching above its weight only because we took the best parts of [other countries’] success stories. For example, we are so close to Scandinavia, we are almost like a Scandinavian country in some approaches we have. We couldn't have an Alligator Alcatraz in Estonia, because that would be against the law because it's a human rights violation, and that's something that's very Scandinavian. 

The U.S. is doing very badly in many rankings like press freedom. You're right next to Gambia and Sierra Leone in like 55th place. And that was the list before Trump even came to power. So that's almost like third-world country standards in press freedom. So I feel like Americans don't compare themselves to other countries enough. And I understand why that is, because the U.S. is such a big country itself. But they should. 

It's really absurd to see the U.S. [public] be so obedient to power. It's crazy to see all these big companies caving in against the pressure. You shouldn’t be so obedient to power. From a young age, Americans learn that the president is very important. But I mean, you shouldn't give in when the president just asks something stupid. Yeah. Learn from the best examples in the world. I think the U.S. currently isn’t doing that.

And more advice to Americans: they should read documents like the [U.S.] Senate report on activities in 2016, or for example, investigative articles like I did to see how Russia is actively and maliciously operating in attacking the West. It's very open. I don't understand when there are social media posts that say, ‘Why should we actually hate Russia? They've done nothing to us.’ They do stuff to you all the time. 

# # # 

You can listen to this conversation by following Weight of the World on Spotify and Apple. This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.