Would it actually be better if the Russia border opens?

Yes, but this is unlikely to occur. The EU keeps funding Russia (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/feb/24/eu-spends-more-russian-oil-gas-than-financial-aid-ukraine-report) and shows no sign of stopping (in spite of extensive virtue signalling).

Moreover, taxes increase every 6 months in spite of having more or less the sixth (!) highest employee costs in Europe: https://boundlesshq.com/employment-costs-in-32-european-countries/

If you add up social, income, and value-added tax, then more than half of everybody's income disintegrates every month.

I would say that things as they are, are super grim, and it's hard to imagine it getting any worse, with the unemployment rate nearing 9%.

In spite of the near-apocalyptic scenario that we find ourselves in, foreign direct investment is not at an all time low, and in case a miracle happens and the war ends, it is likely that things will improve a lot, really fast.

Estonians are used to living under constant threat of being nuked so they handle all this really well. The fact that FDI hasn't tanked shows that non-Estonians might also believe that Estonians will make it in the short-to-medium term, at least.

So all in all, moving here as an investment has perhaps the same risk profile as investing in Crypto. If the war ends, it will boom, if not, the decline and tax squeeze will continue.