Estonia considers itself a frontline NATO member state, where its border guards look across the Narva River to the Russian fortress of Ivangorod.
This small Baltic state, once part of the Soviet Union, is convinced that when the fighting stops in Ukraine, President Vladimir Putin will turn his attention to the Baltic countries, seeking to bring countries like Estonia back under Moscow’s control.
To help avoid that possibility, the Estonian government poured money and weapons into Ukraine’s war effort, donating more than 1% of its GDP to Kiev.
“If all NATO countries did this”, says the tough Estonian prime minister Kaja Kallas“Ukraine would win.”
But Ukraine is not winning.
Lacking artillery, ammunition, air defenses and, above all, troops, Ukraine is struggling to contain the weight of Russian firepower, glide bombs and massive infantry attacks that often border on suicide.
What, I asked Prime Minister Kallas, is Estonia’s Plan B if Ukraine loses this war and Russia’s invasion turns out to be successful?
“We don’t have any plan B for a Russian victory,” she responds, “because then we would stop focusing on Plan A” – helping Ukraine push back the Russian invasion.
“We must not give in to pessimism. Victory in Ukraine is not just about territory. If Ukraine joins NATO, even without some territory, then it will be a victory, because it will be brought under the umbrella of NATO.”
Kaja Kallas is controversial. She is not the first national leader to be more popular outside her country than within it.
Born a Soviet citizen, her mother and grandmother were forcibly deported to Siberia.
Now 46 and prime minister since 2021, she is one of NATO’s most aggressive leaders when it comes to weakening the Kremlin’s ambitions in Europe. This has scared some in the White House that it risks dragging the West into direct conflict with Moscow.
Existential threat from Russia
Many Estonians are also not happy with the increase in taxes to pay for their contribution to Ukraine’s defense. But Kaja Kallas wants the West to wake up to what she sees as an existential threat from a newly aggressive Russia.
“Russia wants to sow fear in our societies,” she tells us, sitting in her cabinet office in the Estonian equivalent of 10 Downing Street, overlooking the tall towers and ancient castle walls of Tallinn’s Old Town.
“We see different hybrid attacks in many parts of the EU.”
“Hybrid attacks”, also known as “subthreshold” or “gray zone” warfare, are hostile actions suspected of being carried out by an adversary such as Russia, where no shots are necessarily fired, no one is killed, and the blame lies often difficult to identify – but damage can be extensive.
An example, yet to be resolved, would be the mysterious underwater explosions that blew up the Nordstream gas pipelines under the Baltic Sea in 2022. Another example is the recent allegation of Russian electronic interference in flights passing near its enclave of Kaliningrad, on the Baltic coast.
In its latest annual report, Estonia’s internal security service, Kapo, cites the example of last autumn, when hundreds of schools in Estonia and other Baltic states received emails claiming that bombs had been planted in school buildings.
“Such threats,” the report says, “aim to create psychological and emotional tension by targeting the most vulnerable – threatening the safety of children.”
‘Denial is the key to strategy’
So how vulnerable is Estonia to a future Russian invasion?
“We have to prepare for war so we don’t have it,” says a NATO official, speaking on the sidelines of NATO’s Exercise Steadfast Defender.
On Estonia’s southern border with Latvia, old British Challenger 2 tanks and other armored vehicles from the 1980s bob over farmland, belching exhaust fumes into the clean spring air.
Russia’s large-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 was something of a wake-up call for the Western alliance. It made NATO chiefs realize that they needed to significantly reinforce their military presence on Europe’s eastern flank if they were to deter any future Russian invasion.
Today, the United Kingdom leads a 1,200-strong battle group based in Tapa in northern Estonia and made up of tanks, infantry, artillery, drones and an elite French mountain infantry company.
“The key part of this denial strategy,” says Brigadier Giles Harris, who commands UK forces here, “is ensuring we have enough forces assembled in time to create greater deterrence.”
I point out that 1,200 soldiers don’t seem like a lot when the big lesson from the current conflict in Ukraine is that the masses matter. Russia may have poor tactics and equipment, but it can mobilize such superior numbers of men and ammunition that it is often able to overwhelm Ukraine’s defenses.
“Your observations that one battle group is not enough would have been fair a few years ago,” he responds. “But our new plans see us reinforcing on a brigade scale [3,000-5,000 troops] even before a short, small-scale foray [by Russia].”
“We have a high readiness formation in the UK… to get heavier forces here in time… and it’s a complete change from where we were before.”
British forces based in Tapa, and their Estonian partners, are keeping an eye on what is happening in Ukraine.
“It’s a window into the tactical deployment of Russian troops,” says Brig. Harris. “Now we see our training here in Estonia much more as a mission rehearsal specifically to combat the enemy that we see happening in the south. [Ukraine].”
So I ask you, ultimately, given the setbacks that Ukraine is currently experiencing, largely due to ammunition and manpower shortages, is the British commander here confident that a Russian incursion into Estonia would be repelled successfully?
“Absolutely,” he responds, without hesitation. “More now than ever.”
