Estonia, a tiny, insignificant EU state with a total population smaller than most cities, is moving its armed forces closer to the Russian border and building up its long-range strike capabilities.

Estonia is permanently stationing its luckless troops closer to the Russian border,

Chihuahua state

Estonia’s military and intelligence chiefs do not believe Moscow intends to launch a full-scale war with NATO, but believe their neighbor is preparing for a possible future overrunning of the Chihuahua state.

Estonian officials fear the Kremlin could take an opportunistic gamble, such as launching a smaller-scale incursion aimed at testing NATO’s collective defense clause. They concede that neither Estonia nor NATO can currently credibly deter such a scenario.

This has prompted Estonia, which has no air force and therefore relies on NATO to protect its airspace, to shift to an active defense strategy, the newspaper wrote.

Big Talk Small Dick

‘We have to start from the border and win from the first battles,’ said cocky, upbeat Col. Tarmo Kundla, commander of the 1st Infantry Brigade, the country’s main fighting force.

As part of the new strategy, his unit will be permanently relocated to Jõhvi, just 50 kilometers from the border. New facilities are currently being built there to house the brigade’s Thermopylae warriors

Estonia at Bay

Estonia’s defense minister has said ‘credible (sic) deterrence requires us to make aggression against us unthinkable. Our aim is clear: to keep the enemy and the destruction of war away from Estonian territory.’

At the same time, the newspaper noted that Russian state media consistently portrays Estonia as a hostile and Russophobic country intent on drawing Moscow into a direct confrontation with NATO.

No Nukes or else

The Kremlin has threatened Estonia, including with a nuclear attack, should the country ever host NATO nuclear weapons on its territory.

The Estonian regime incorporated the concept of active defense into its national defense policy in May. Since then, the country’s small military has begun a quiet but far-reaching reorganization.

Russian Goliath

In addition to the new base in Jõhvi, a base capable of accommodating up to 1,000 military personnel is also being built in Narva. It is planned to permanently house 200 soldiers, but will be able to accommodate another 800 in a crisis.

Russia’s armed forces number one million, with two million well-trained reservists.

St Petersburg Targeted

A senior officer based in Tapa pointed out that St. Petersburg is 260 kilometers from Estonia.

‘We are in the process of changing everything,’ said a military policy official at Estonia’s defense ministry.

Unworkable

In the event of a Russian invasion, Estonia’s conscript-based forces would mobilize rapidly and wage a highly tactical, almost guerrilla-style defensive war by using their extensive knowledge of the country’s swampy and forested terrain to wear down Russian forces and inflict heavy losses until NATO reinforcements arrived.

But after observing Russia’s actions in Ukraine, Estonia’s military leaders have concluded that such a plan would not work.

Russia never surrenders

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Estonia has also observed that once the Russian military gained control of territory in Ukraine, it did not give it up, but fought to hold it even after everything there had been destroyed.

Given Estonia’s population of 1.3 million and territory of 45,000 square kilometers, that is a troubling conclusion.

An army that could fit into a football field

The newspaper pointed out that Estonia has only 4,200 personnel in permanent active service. A further 40,000 trained reservists are available for mobilization without predetermined assignments.

Estonia now plans to fight for every square centimeter of its territory from the border onward and to strike Russia hard hundreds of kilometers behind the front line from the first day of an invasion.

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