DARKMARKET

Patriotic War (as the Russians call the Second World War) from its position in the heart of Tallinn to the city's main cemetery, which is frankly not far from the centre. Russia and its leadership perceived this to be an intolerable insult, even as proof of a resurgence of fascistic Estonian nationalism (all 750,000 of them) and a snub to those soldiers of the Red Army who had sacrificed their lives in liberating Estonia from the Nazi yoke.

The dispute over the bronze soldier escalated. The Russian media, both inside Estonia and across the border in Russia, stoked the genuine worries of Estonia's Russian minority and before long matters had reached breaking point. On the afternoon of 27th April hundreds of young ethnic Russians, citizens of Estonia, gathered in the centre of Tallinn. The protest against the removal of the memorial remained peaceful and good-humoured until one group attempted to break through a police cordon protecting the statue. Violent clashes erupted and spread quickly - by the evening the old town, a UNESCO heritage site, was ablaze as cars were set on fire, shop windows were smashed and their contents looted.

As the disturbances threatened to spread, Moscow issued warnings citing Estonian police brutality, and the country that had gained its independence from the Soviet Union less than two decades earlier, was gripped by uncertainty and fear. It was highly unlikely that Russia would offer Estonia 'fraternal assistance', to use the Soviet euphemism for sending in tanks. After all, Estonia was by now a member of NATO and it seemed inconceivable that Russia would want to trigger NATO's defence grantee - all for one and one for all - because of a bloody statue!

Thankfully for all of us, the Kremlin indeed showed no inclination to render any fraternal assistance, but as Tallinn's centre crackled and fizzed with rioters and flag-burners, hackers were opening up a new front in this peculiar conflict.

That evening the websites of Estonia's President and several government ministries started receiving inordinate amounts of spam email, while the Prime Minister's photo on his party's website was defaced. Russian-language chat rooms began to exhort hackers to launch attacks on Estonian sites and were distributing the software to do so. According to sources quoted in a US Embassy telegram to Washington (c/o WikiLeaks), the initial attacks were technically unsophisticated and 'seemed more like a cyber riot than a cyber war'.