Estonia is automatically diverting emails using Russia’s .ru internet domain into quarantine for additional security checks before they reach state institutions connected to the country’s secure government network, Justice and Digital Affairs Minister Liisa Pakosta told Estonia's public broadcaster ERR.

The measure is intended to protect Estonian government computer systems amid a post-2022 surge in cyberattacks that officials link to Russia. It applies only to institutions operating inside the secure state network, leaving local governments and some state bodies outside.

Many Estonian residents, particularly Russian speakers, still use .ru email services, ERR noted. Because the filter is triggered solely by the address ending, legitimate messages will be screened alongside potentially malicious ones and may take longer to arrive.

Pakosta said the safeguard was necessary because cyberattacks against Estonia had increased “exponentially” since 2022 and that many were linked to Russia. She said such attacks had not succeeded against Estonia, while major public-sector cyberattacks had succeeded in both Latvia and Lithuania.

The rerouting is automatic and handled centrally, so agencies do not need to take any action, Pakosta said. A large proportion of state institutions have already moved behind the government’s unified cyber shield, while the transition continues.

Pakosta described the quarantine as one small measure within Estonia’s wider cybersecurity work. Estonia’s courts have gone further, saying they will ask parties in legal proceedings to stop using .ru addresses for official communication, according to ERR.

How the Baltic states are hardening against Russia

Estonia's email quarantine forms part of a broader Baltic effort to limit Russian influence and strengthen defenses against military, cyber, and covert threats.

Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania are constructing a Baltic Defense Line, a planned network of bunkers, anti-tank ditches, and other barriers, along their borders with Russia and Belarus. Latvia has also banned imports of Russian and Belarusian books, clothing, toys, and other goods.

The threat extends beyond cyberattacks: an Estonian court found that Russia’s military intelligence agency, the GRU, ordered the 2024 firebombing of a Ukrainian restaurant in Tallinn, part of a wider Russian sabotage campaign targeting European supporters of Ukraine.

A fire at a Polish plant that makes drone parts for Ukraine's and Poland's militaries is being investigated as possible sabotage by a foreign intelligence service, Militarnyi reported. Poland's National Prosecutor's Office opened the case on two counts: foreign-intelligence activity against the country and a terrorist offense.

Fires and break-ins like this fit a widening pattern — the factories and supply lines that keep Ukraine armed are increasingly targets far from the front line. Across the continent, prosecutors keep opening the same kind of arson case against plants tied to Ukraine's defense.

A masked intruder and a two-hour fire

The fire started shortly after midnight on 31 August in the assembly hall of the WB Electronics plant in Skarżysko-Kamienna and spread to the storage rooms. Five crews put it out in under two hours. No one was hurt, but the storage rooms were destroyed, leaving at least 15 million zloty ($4 million) in damage. The plant had no permanent guards on site; a security company monitoring it remotely reported the fire.

Prosecutors say the blaze was set deliberately with a planted charge of flammable material, and no one has been charged. Security cameras recorded a masked person who climbed a fence and got onto the site.

Why Poland is looking at Moscow

Czesław Mroczek, deputy head of Poland's Interior Ministry, told RMF FM radio that many signs point to arson, and that a Russian trail is the obvious inference. An attack on the defense industry can suggest Russian involvement, he said, since European states have faced sabotage for years while backing Ukraine. Mroczek said protection plans for key defense plants must be richer than what this site had. No one has been detained, and investigators are still tracing how the intruder got in and who may have ordered it.

What the plant actually makes

WB Electronics is the core of WB Group, Poland's biggest private arms holding, whose firms build reconnaissance and strike drones such as the FlyEye and the Warmate. The Skarżysko-Kamienna site itself makes drone components for unmanned systems, used by both Polish and Ukrainian forces. Ukraine received FlyEye drones back in 2022 under its Army of Drones program, and in 2025 WB Group launched drone production inside Ukraine.