Estonia to Station US Tanks, Combat Vehicles in October

[Ars Moriendi]

It's not like it's a new thing. Most European nations are covered by American bases, and some European armies are under direct American command (I think it's the case for Italy).

I personally considered any station of a foreign regiment as an invasion and a casus belli.

Yes, Italy and Germany are the two main locations from which the US projects its influence. Most bases and comm stations are located there.
AFRICOM is actually cented in Frankfurt even.

All part of the grander settings of the American Protectorate over Europe. EU as a civilian and commercial facade, NATO as the military hard-power tool.

[Empecinado]

We are occupied too, they managed to kill or purge all the anti-NATO generals. Unlike the other high military commanders from Europe (except De Gaulle) they were not USA ass lickers and defended the national sovereignity concept, in fact they were veterans from the Wehrmacht and were against of foreign occupiers, both USSR and USA.

[Ars Moriendi]

Something interesting coming out from Estonia's government. Although meant as anathema, this condamnation ends up providing food for thought:

-------------------------------------------------

Estonia’s president: Russia is threatening ‘the entire post-World War II order’

By Lally Weymouth

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinio...e5f_story.html

Raised in New Jersey, Estonia’s President Toomas Hendrik Ilves does not mince words when it comes to the situation in Ukraine and the threat Russia poses to his country and the region. He took time last week to speak with The Post’s Lally Weymouth. Excerpts:


Q. What do you think of the situation in Ukraine?

A. The issue is not just Ukraine — it is the entire post-World War II order, which is under question. The Helsinki Final Act forbade border changes through aggression and says explicitly that no such change in borders would be recognized.

[This] was already annulled by the [Russian] attack on Georgia in 2008. Prime Minister [Vladimir] Putin and President [Dmitry] Medvedev said they did it because Georgia wanted to join NATO. No one heard the alarm.

Now it is Ukraine, where even more egregiously, the casus belli is that Ukraine wanted to have an association agreement with the European Union. [Such an agreement] really doesn’t give you very much.

So the association agreement was not a big deal?

Right. Clearly why the United States is worried — and oddly more worried than some countries in Europe — is that this is chaos. If you can’t count on the most essential agreements — that you don’t invade countries and don’t change borders — then we are in a whole new world here.

Do you think the U.S. response has been sufficient?

I would say the West has been in a state of shock. My analogy is that we are in 1945 or 1946, when the United States and Europe started noticing that their erstwhile ally against the Nazis was starting to do funny things and toppling governments and starting a civil war in Greece. In the beginning, people didn’t know [what to do]. Then [Britain’s] socialist Labor foreign minister [Ernest] Bevin came up with the idea of NATO. He saw Hungary, Poland and Czechoslovakia go, and he got worried. He approached the Americans and said, let’s do something. The response was NATO and the Marshall Plan. The world had changed. . . . That was the beginning of the Cold War.

Do you think Putin will build a land bridge to Crimea? Will he go to Transnistria? To the eastern part of Estonia? What’s next?

Looking at the isolation of Crimea and where they are concentrating their troops and the Russian attack on Mariupol, the land bridge to Crimea seems to be not farfetched. It seems their goal in eastern Ukraine is to create another frozen conflict.

I keep reading that Narva [the Russian-speaking part of eastern Estonia] is next. But this is silly. The average Russian miner in Donetsk gets [the equivalent of] 200 euros a month. The average Russian miner in Estonia gets 2,000 euros a month. All residents of Estonia are members of the E.U. and have free movement of labor across Europe. Polls show that people think the Russian annexation of Crimea is good. But if you ask them if they want to join Russia, they say no.

Russian propaganda is said to be very effective in eastern Estonia. Is it?

Yes, in so far as getting support for Crimea. At the same time, we are having a strong upswing in Russian liberals moving to Estonia. We see a rising belligerence all around toward many countries: practice bombing raids approaching Sweden; others approaching the northwest coast of the United States. . . . In 2011 they were practicing using a tactical nuclear weapon on Warsaw. They didn’t do it, but you don’t know what they are going to do. Last week, they opened criminal proceedings against Lithuanians who dodged the Soviet draft 25 years ago.

In our case, we had the equivalent of our FBI investigating a cigarette-smuggling ring. There was this bizarre event in which they came across the Estonian border during a meeting between the smuggler and our guy [the Estonian officer] and hauled him off and now he’s sitting in Lefortovo prison [in Russia].

That happened right after President Obama left Estonia? Was that meant to send a signal to Estonians?

We don’t know. You see an overlap between organized crime and the Russian secret service.

Do you feel the U.S. and the West have done enough to protect your country?
The outcome of the Wales summit was very good.

The 4,000-man rotational force?

Yes. And there is an air force training base being set up on our airfield. There will also be ground troops.

Do you think Putin would be clever enough to try the strategy of appealing to the Russian-speaking Estonians so he wouldn’t have to invade Estonia with troops? Or do you think he might actually try to invade the Baltic States?

It is all so new, so it is hard to say. It’s not about conventional forces going over the border. They used the “little green men” [counterinsurgency fighters] until they were getting badly beaten by the Ukrainians and then they brought in their conventional forces.

The big difference is that Ukraine is not in NATO and we are. This is about Article 5 — if it ever fails, then NATO no longer works. Then no one trusts it.

Do you feel you’ve crossed the Rubicon by joining NATO?

We are on the right side of the Rubicon. . . . There is a big difference between NATO and non-NATO. Why is NATO not defending Ukraine? Because Ukraine is not a member of NATO and we are. The question is not if we believe in Article 5. The question is, does Putin believe in Article 5?

Would the U.S. and Europe react?

I think they would. Obama said quite clearly that Tallinn and Riga and Vilnius are no less secure than Paris, Berlin and London.

You’ve talked about the NATO-Russia Founding Act and how it should be changed for a new security environment.

The problem with the NATO-Russia Founding Act is that [it was signed] in 1997 when Boris Yeltsin was president. It was like peace and love and Woodstock, and now we are in Altamont. I would argue that, between 1997 and 2014, the security environment changed substantially.

I think we have to revisit this illusory partnership that exists between NATO and Russia.

Do you see an absence of American leadership?

The U.S. is not going to put troops on the ground in a non-NATO country and risk a firefight with Russia. They would risk a fight in a NATO country because it is a treaty obligation. There is no treaty obligation for Ukraine.

When we became independent, we got the best and brightest to work on getting Estonia into the E.U. and into NATO. Thank God we did.

-------------------


Although meant as a Westernizing pledge of allegiance, along with a routine condamnation; it does bring the question if the post 1945 (and specially the post 1991) Anglo-American order will finally be reassessed. It'll be a good day when such a thing happens.

[Rugevit]

Estonia is a sovereign state but it is not an independent state. Their independence is conditional on several factors. The same can be said about several former block countries in eastern Europe.

[Rædwald]

I feel for Estonia, I want to visit there some day.

[Ars Moriendi]

After the capture of the Estonian policeman by the FSB; Tallinn has opened a new chapter in the hostilities between the two countries by arresting two former KGB operatives in the Narva river (border between two countries). Prosecutors haven't yet stated what they're accused of.

On the meantime, military preparations continue to go underway. While a new volunteer birgade is being trained composed by young Estonians, the government has announced the purchase of 44 tanks coming from the Netherlands.

You can find an article for each of these events here:

Estonia arrests former KGB officers
http://www.theguardian.com/world/201...fficers-arrest

Incident follows Russian kidnapping of Estonian agent, pointing to heightened tensions between Moscow and Tallinn

Spoiler!

Eston Kohver, an Estonian policeman detained by Russia and charged with spying. Youtube Photograph: Youtube

Two former Soviet security officials have been arrested crossing into Estonia, the second major incident between Russia and its Baltic neighbour in the past weeks.

In early September an Estonian security agent was abducted at gunpoint and taken to Russia, where he is awaiting trial after being accused of spying.

Last Sunday two Russians, reportedly identified as former KGB officers, were held by Estonian border guards when their boat allegedly crossed the border on the Narva River near Lake Peipsi.

The men, Mihhail Suhoshin, 64, and Alexander Ladur, 54, are being held on charges of resisting arrest and illegally entering Estonia.

The incidents point to heightened tensions between the two countries.

“The ex-KGB guys caught on the Narva River are ‘ex’ and may have been merely fishing,” said Kalev Stoicescu, a research fellow and Russia expert at the Tallinn based International Centre for Defence Studies. “But the Russians are testing all types of borders, on land, at sea and in the air space of many Nato and EU countries including Estonia. They do this to provoke, but also to test reactions both technically and politically.”

Estonia’s eastern border, renowned for smuggling and spy games, was the scene of turn with the abduction of security official Eston Kohver on 5 September.

Kohver, an officer of the Kaitsepolitsei or KaPo, Estonia’s counter intelligence agency, was held at gunpoint near the Luhamaa border checkpoint in remote south-eastern Estonia carrying a large amount of cash and a firearm.

There has been speculation that he was meeting a Russian informant when he was snatched by the FSB, Russia’s intelligence service. He is currently awaiting trial on espionage charges in Moscow, and faces decades in prison.

“The Kohver abduction was possibly political and symbolic, as it happened the same day as the Nato summit in Wales and a day after Obama’s visit to Estonia,” Stoicescu said. “But there may be more prosaic reasons connected to the FSB’s own relations with the underworld and smuggling across the Estonian frontier.”

A bone of contention in the Kohver case is what side of the border he was on when he was apprehended. Estonia says he was kidnapped from home soil, while Russia claims that he was caught across the border trying to corrupt a Russian official.

The uncertainty surrounding the case is heightened because the exact location of the Estonian/Russian border is not clear. A final border treaty has yet to be ratified, and the de facto border runs much further to the west than the internationally recognised border agreed upon during Estonia’s short-lived inter-war independence in 1920.

With Estonia one of the most sparsely populated countries in the EU, the border is largely rural and in many places densely thicketed and overgrown. The border is porous and lightly guarded. Lack of resources means improving border security is difficult.

“There are constant attempts to smuggle illegal immigrants, alcohol, tobacco, and light arms into Estonia. Given the present state of affairs concerning the border control, I assume that only a portion of the smuggling is actually prevented or detected,” Stoicescu says.

Alarm Over Russia Draws Volunteers to Defend Estonia
http://online.wsj.com/articles/alarm...nia-1412266762

Spoiler!

New volunteers for the Estonian Defense League prepare for training last month outside Tallinn. Some 600 men and women joined in the first half of 2014, double last year’s pace. Liis Kangsepp/The Wall Street Journal

TALLINN, Estonia—On a recent weekend in an Estonian forest, a group of new recruits in army fatigues practiced maneuvers. A sergeant major barked out instructions and the unit changed formation, sometimes crawling in the dirt between birch trees.

But these weren’t professional soldiers: They were some of the hundreds of edgy Estonians who have flocked to a volunteer army in the months since neighboring Russia annexed part of Ukraine to the south.

Recruitment in the first half of this year doubled to 600 compared with 300 in the same period last year. The Estonian Defense League, or Kaitseliit, now has around 14,500 members in its fighting units, compared with around 3,800 in the professional military.

The surge is a sign of how Russia’s newly aggressive foreign policy is rattling people across Eastern Europe. It is echoed in the rising popularity of similar paramilitary forces like the Riflemen’s Unions of Lithuania and Poland and Latvia’s home guard.

The Kaitseliit is run by the Defense Department and its members are expected to report for duty in the event of a national crisis.

“I want to defend my homeland, my family,” said Kevin Ungro, an 18-year-old student, during a break in training. “The more people who know how to handle a gun, the better our chances of defending ourselves.”

In the woods outside Tallinn, students mix with doctors, chief executives and engineers, daubing each other’s faces in green and brown camouflage paint and checking each other’s helmet straps.


New Kaitseliit recruits take positions for battle training on Sept. 19. Liis Kangsepp/The Wall Street Journal

“Charlie covers, Delta move out,” shouts the instructor and briefly there is a confusion—Which of the eight men belong to Charlie, which to Delta? Who has to run forward and who stays back to secure the imaginary line of battle? Who is partnered with whom? What happens if your partner is taken down in battle?

Finally it is established who is Charlie and the men and women, all equipped with rifles, try again. “Delta covers, Charlie move out,” the instructor shouts and four people jump up, move a few steps further and throw themselves back on the ground. Another group watches taking notes.

The battle training, called “fire and movement,” is conducted by senior Kaitseliit members. They are hoping that such skills will help at least slow any invasion from the east.

Moscow talks regularly of a need to defend ethnic Russian minorities in nearby states, whose interests it claims are threatened by hostile governments from Tallinn to Kiev. Officials in the Baltics worry this could be used as a pretext for military aggression against them, as happened in Ukraine.

A quarter of Estonia’s population of 1.3 million is ethnic Russians.

Conflicts with Moscow are a recurring feature of the history of Estonia. It won its freedom from Russia after a war ending 1920, but was annexed again by the Soviets in 1940. Estonia regained independence in 1991 and joined the European Union and North Atlantic Treaty Organization in 2004, along with its Baltic neighbors.

U.S. President Barack Obama visited Tallinn last month to reassure nervous Balts that protecting them is every bit as important as protecting Berlin or London. Article 5 of the NATO charter commits alliance members to defend each other if any one is attacked.

Yet as Russia has rebuilt its military capabilities under President Vladimir Putin, Estonia has been watching with rising trepidation. Ukraine, which isn’t a NATO member, lost its Crimea region to Russia early this year, then saw its eastern border destabilized by Russian-backed separatists.

“Russia’s attack against Ukraine influenced all of us a lot,” said Helary Poolmaa, a student and Kaitseliit newcomer. “If Russia can act like this in Ukraine, they are surely able to do the same thing here.”


Kaitseliit recruit Helary Poolmaa practicing riot control. Liis Kangsepp/The Wall Street Journal

Brig. Gen. Meelis Kiili, who heads the volunteer league, calls it a valuable addition to Estonia’s military deterrent.

“Everyone talks about NATO Article 5,” Gen. Kiili said. “For us in Estonia, one of the most important articles is Article 3, which says every country is responsible for its own defense.”

At another point in the weekend training session, 16 recruits learn how to handle a riot. They stand four in a row, the first row holding shields. Behind them are four people with rifles.

“Go and arrest this man in green,” shouts their instructor, and shields open, men and women run out and take down the “offender,” grabbing him and dragging him back behind the shield line.

Their first attempts are slow and clumsy, but as the shadows grow longer they become faster and more experienced, despite being pelted by bottles and bricks.

Mart Luik, the chief executive of an Estonian newspaper and another new recruit, said he hopes his training might enable him to slow down an enemy advance.

The 43-year-old had dodged his military service in 1989, when he refused to respond to a call from the Soviet Army on the grounds that it was an occupying force. Now, he says, he wants to learn the basics about defense.

“I don’t even like guns but we need to do something,” he said. “We need to make an aggressor think twice.”

Estonia to buy Dutch CV90s
http://www.janes.com/article/44032/e...uy-dutch-cv90s

Spoiler!

Estonia is planning to buy 44 CV9035NL infantry fighting vehicles from the Netherlands.

The Netherlands is to sell 44 BAE Systems CV9035NL infantry fighting vehicles (IFV) to Estonia, Dutch defence minister Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert announced on 1 October during a visit to the Baltic country.

A deal covering maintenance and information exchange was signed during the visit, while a final contract for the sale is expected in December, according to the Dutch Ministry of Defence (MoD).

No contract value for the sale of the Netherland's CV90s was disclosed, citing commercial confidentiality. No modification is envisioned as part of the sale, although a ministry spokesperson said the vehicles will be delivered "after comprehensive maintenance".

The Estonian Defence Ministry told IHS Jane's the acquisition is "aimed to strengthen Estonia's armoured manoeuvring capability at the 1st Infantry Brigade Scouts Battalion and contributes to our independent defence capabilities". The vehicles also will provide "training opportunities with similar allied forces, as with the US 8th Cavalry Regiment's heavy equipment troops arriving this month".

Estonia's National Defence Development Plan 2013-2022 explicitly mentioned developing the country's armed forces, with the MoD telling IHS Jane's that "further acquisitions of mechanised infantry equipment will be considered in the process of preparing the next Defence Development Plan". IHS Jane's understands that the country is currently holding discussions on whether it should acquire a main battle tank (MBT) capability.

It's not the first sale of Dutch surplus army materiel to the Estonian armed forces. In 2010 the country bought 80 Patria Pasi XA-188 6x6 armoured personnel carriers, including ambulance and command variants, from the Netherlands.

Some Dutch CV90's are expected to be employed by Estonia next February, participating in army manoeuvers to allow the Estonian Army "to get acquainted with the vehicle" and in a military parade commemorating Estonian Independence Day (24 February).

The projected sale of 44 of the Dutch armed forces' inventory of 193 CV9035NL IFVs is considered controversial domestically in the Netherlands as it means another round of laying-off of armoured vehicles, eroding the Netherland's ability to conduct mechanised warfare. In 2010 the army was forced to sell all of its Krauss-Maffei Wegmann Leopard 2A6 MBTs. With current state of affairs vis-à-vis NATO's relations with Russia in mind, the re-introduction of a small number of Leopard 2's, in co-operation with the German armed forces, is now being considered.

According to the Dutch MoD the planned acquisition of an extra 20 Thales Australia Bushmaster protected mobility vehicles should partly compensate for the sale of the CV90's.