Two Border Cities Share Russian History — and a Sharp European Divide<br />Viktor Karpenko, Ivangorod’s mayor and a former officer in the Federal Security Service, or the F.S.B., Russia’s domestic security service, said the difference was because of the difficult terrain<br />and legal restrictions on the Russian side of the river — not corruption.<br />Leonid Pelesev, an ethnic Russian who coaches Narva schoolchildren in chess, said<br />that many of his fellow Russian-speakers in the Estonian town watch Russian state television and support, on an emotional level, the muscular nationalism promoted by Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin.<br />Even stalwart Russian patriots in Narva concede that, despite their support for Mr. Putin and their anger at Estonian citizenship rules<br />that they say discriminate against Russian speakers, they have no desire to move over the river to Ivangorod.<br />"Russians here do not want to go back to the motherland." Some people are moving across the border to set up new homes,<br />but they are mostly citizens of Russia buying property in Estonia either as an investment or as a way to get access to Narva’s better health care and the security offered by the European Union, of which Estonia is a member.<br />"It is not really even a town over there — just a road or two," scoffed Vladimir Petrov, the leader<br />of the Union of Russian Citizens, a group that lobbies on behalf of Russians living in Narva.<br />9, 2017<br />IVANGOROD, Russia — Little divides the Russian town of Ivangorod and its Estonian twin, Narva, but a fairly narrow river.
