The issue was raised in the Riigikogu on Wednesday by EKRE MP and former Interior Minister Mart Helme.

"Recently, I have been approached by several members of local government councils and other public institutions in Ida-Viru County, who have pointed out that there has been a noticeable increase in cases of ethnic Russians changing their names," Helme said. "These name changes are often accompanied by a change of ethnicity as well. People wish to Estonianize their names and alter their previously recorded ethnic affiliation, changing it to Estonian."

He asked whether the Interior Ministry collects statistics on such changes and whether it knows who is making them: Russian citizens, stateless persons or Estonian citizens who are not ethnically Estonian.

"We should pay very close attention to whether the local national minority is being prepared for some kind of domestic political unrest by being recorded as Estonian on paper, creating the impression that Estonians are participating when, in fact, they are not," Helme argued.

Detailed statistics do not exist

Taro answered that security threats do not, in themselves, arise directly from how someone identifies their ethnicity. "The ISS certainly monitors security threats across a wide range of areas, including various religious organizations."

He noted that the ministry does not keep separate statistics on the issue because it has not previously been identified as a problem.

"In itself, this cannot be regarded as a security risk if someone changes their name or simply changes their ethnic designation in the population register from Russian to Estonian," Taro said. "It may be a person from a mixed family, or perhaps the ethnic affiliation was entered incorrectly at some point in the past, or was recorded by a parent, for example, and the individual later wished to correct or clarify it upon reaching adulthood."

"If this phenomenon is indeed occurring, it more likely reflects people's desire to integrate more fully into Estonian society. If they harbored hostile intentions toward Estonian society, they would hardly want to make their names more Estonian or revise their ethnic affiliation in that direction," Taro said.

The minister also cited a recent survey commissioned by the Government Office, according to which 88 percent of all residents and 82 percent of residents of other ethnic backgrounds consider belonging to Estonian society important.

Ethnic Estonian share increased, data shows

EKRE lawmaker Arvo Aller referred to a October article by newspaper Põhjarannik reporting that the share of ethnic Estonians in Ida-Viru County's population had increased by 2.4 percent.

According to data from Statistics Estonia, ethnic Estonians accounted for 18.5 percent of Ida-Viru County's population in 2022. That figure has since risen to 20.9 percent, an increase of 2.4 percentage points, Põhjarannik said.

"The data show that, since 2022, there have been five times as many people in Ida-Viru County who changed their ethnicity from Russian to Estonian as there have been people who changed their ethnicity from Estonian to Russian. As a result, the increase in the number of Estonians in Ida-Viru County is primarily due to updates to ethnicity records," Statistics Estonia commented.

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