Nele Loorents, former Representative of Estonian Defense Ministry to Estonian Embassy in Washington, spoke to Harici: “We really believe in collective defense and Article 5. But at the same time, we understand that in the worst-case scenario, there is this timely factor. So, we really want to be prepared to fight back from the first day ourselves.”
Nele Loorents joined the International Center for Defence and Security (ICDS) as research fellow in December 2023. Prior joining the ICDS she had a long-term career as a civil servant at the Estonian Ministry of Defence. Since 2000 she pertained to the fields of Defence Investments, as well as Defence Policy and Planning.
Nele Loorents answered journalist Dr. Esra Karahindiba’s questions Esntonia’s defense policy and the Russia-Ukraine war.
You’re working for the defense ministry for 23 years now and you know you remember the period just post-Soviet and now. Can you briefly tell me what is the summary of the transformation you witnessed all these years in defense policy of Estonia? And you can also talk about the Baltics because you have similar experience with neighbors.
I think what is really important from our perspective is that when we gained our independence, it was immediately crucial for us to completely cut off from the Russian legacy. So, we completely started from scratch with everything. We restructured our defense to be more applicable to the western militaries.
Obviously, from the first day, we had a strong determination to join both NATO and the EU as we understood that for a small nation like Estonia, and also other Baltic states, it was essential and existential to gain membership in larger organizations. That’s why we worked heavily in the first years of our independence to be applicable to join NATO and the EU. We were very conservative in all our actions.
We tried to follow all the requirements and rules set by different organizations as we requested to join them. Economically, the first years of our independence weren’t the easiest, especially due to the fact that we started from scratch. But at the same time, we had a great opportunity to put into leadership a younger generation who just maybe came from universities and already had a western mentality.
So, it helped us a lot that we didn’t have to change the existing system, but we were allowed to build up our society in a way that we thought would be most beneficial for our future and long-term independence effort.
For Central European countries and beyond that, European countries having borders with Russia act as a type of buffer zone metaphorically. How does this make you feel personally as a defense advisor for many years? And how does it impact your policies?
What do you mean by buffer zone?
Now, Ukraine, by Russia’s claim, is in this position because Russia told Ukraine not to come close to NATO and the EU. Ukraine didn’t listen to that because it’s a sovereign country, decided to make its own decision. And now that’s the situation. It’s just being in a buffer zone between Russia and the Europe. It’s like you have the fear and you want to be brave at the same time and you don’t know the result.
I am not sure if it’s the right word to call this Eastern flank a buffer zone. But anyway, Russia has always been our neighbor. And we haven’t had any kind of positive feeling about Russia’s ambitions towards politics or overall their historically claimed regions.
Every now and then, Russian politicians say something about how they see the Baltic states still being historically part of the big Russian empire. And there has always been interest to keep the Baltic states in Russia’s sphere of influence. So that has always been the case.
We never thought there would be any change in Russia’s attitude towards us. And we have developed our defense in a way that we are independently prepared to defend our country. It has been very visible throughout the years how much Estonia, for example, has been investing in defense overall.
Estonia has invested more than two percent in defense since 2015, which is exactly the NATO criteria. But this was the year after Crimea happened. So, we immediately started to react to the situation in very relevant terms.
And it really increased during the Prime Minister Kallas term.
Yes. And now, during the past two and a half years since Ukraine’s full-scale invasion, we have made several decisions to raise our defense budget even more. Right now, the level is 3.2%. There is a commitment by the government to spend more than three percent at least for the next four years. And I think what is even more important is what you are doing with that money.
How do you distribute this money?
In our case, we are spending almost half of the defense budget on procurement and developing new capabilities, which is, I think, in NATO terms probably the highest percentage of all.
Which are the main countries you are procuring defense items from?
Oh, there are a lot of different partners. If we speak about bigger capabilities like medium and long-range fires, then obviously from the U.S. we are procuring HIMARS systems, from Germany the IRIS-T systems. There are quite many partners all over Europe to procure ammunition.
Estonia is one of the biggest procurers of ammunition at this point in Europe, which might seem surprising considering how small we are. But as I said, we really want to be prepared and we really believe in collective defense and Article 5. But at the same time, we understand that in the worst-case scenario, there is this timely factor.
So basically, any kind of reinforcement by Allied forces takes some time. So, we really want to be prepared to fight back from the first day ourselves. That’s why we are investing a lot in possible conflicts, if they happen in our region.
We are investing a lot into our territorial defense. We have also raised our wartime readiness quite significantly during the last year. I think it’s one-fourth, so it’s right now about 40,000 reserves on wartime readiness.
Lots of exercises ongoing, lots of SNAP taxes ongoing. There is a lot of effort put into this overall societal approach to increase the resilience of society. So, there is quite a significant effort actually ongoing currently in order to be prepared if something would happen in our region.
How many percent of your population is Russian? My question would be how they would react to a possible conflict with Russia because it’s their origin, as in all other countries you have Russians. And how do you manage this policy? They’re Estonian citizens but they’re Russian, so do they participate in exercises. Do you have a public questionnaire, like what is the reaction of Russian-origin citizens to the tensions?
I think we currently have about 30 percent of ethnic Russians. Many of those have been very well integrated into Estonian society already, so that’s not a relevant question for the majority of ethnic Russians. But obviously, we have some regions where there is still some pro-Russian mentality.
Yes, like the northeastern part of Estonia, we have this part where the majority of the population is Russian. What has been surprising from our part is, or from the governmental parties, that in the past two years we have made quite many different steps in order to decrease this possible Russian hybrid influence on our ethnic Russian population. We have removed some of the old monuments which were reminders of the Russian and Soviet times and where some people still went to celebrate special days.
And it seems or it was visible that the reaction by the population or Russian ethnic population was less than actually expected. It was expected to be much more restless, but there was very little. Obviously, we can speculate about the reasons for that. But I guess one of the reasons is that especially the younger generation understands that if they are really trying or following this Moscow approach, then they might be influenced by that. They might be the ones who are actually in Ukraine fighting, or their opportunities in Europe to study or work or engage more in that way will be limited or totally cut off.
So, I think the younger generation is more inclined towards the West and trying to disconnect more from this Russian political approach. And I think the older generation is just getting to an age where their voice is maybe not so heard anymore. So that’s probably one of the things.
Going back to the previous question, I would ask you about the distribution of your budget and you talked about having several different sources. So, Türkiye is one of them. I think you were working with Baykar about UAVs. So, can you tell us the level of your cooperation, your procurement, because Baykar was very effective in Ukraine, providing UAVs to the Zelensky government and it was praised for their support. What’s your level of relations with Baykar?
Because I am not exactly an official in procurement at this point, I really don’t know how close the relations with different enterprises are at this point. But I know that in our Ministry of Defense and also our procurement organization, there are really close relations with all NATO allies. And Türkiye most certainly is one of those countries where we try to find more opportunities for further cooperation.
I think what is pretty important also about the Estonian population distribution is currently the level of Ukrainian refugees, because we have more than five percent of our population as refugees from Ukraine. I guess this is really visible also if you walk on the streets and go to the shops and schools and so on, that there is quite a lot of work Estonia is also currently doing in order to integrate those people into our society, because we really don’t know how this terrible situation in Ukraine is.
I want to talk about Suwalki Gap. For Baltic countries, for you, for Lithuania, and Latvia too, that’s a critical issue. Near Kaliningrad, Politico magazine called Suwalki as the most dangerous place on earth. Russian officials are not really mentioning Suwalki. Except once Lukashenko of Belarus hinted something about Suwalki Gap. But from Russia, I don’t hear anything. Why, for Baltic countries, is it at the top of the agenda?
I would say that for Estonia, maybe this Suwalki problem has always been a little bit less relevant than in the case of Lithuania and Poland because it’s really like their borderline. And obviously, the Suwalki problem or this challenge includes also this Belarusian contribution. It means that really then Russia has to leverage Belarusian cooperation or leverage their sources.
So, there are maybe some questions about that also. But during the past two years, there have been significant changes, I would say, in this problem because NATO has made quite significant decisions, but as well they’re having national developments which address this problem. I would bring out just a couple of those which are, I think, very important in order to mitigate this challenge.
First of all, it’s a question about Allied presence. In Madrid, it was decided that NATO will increase in all the needed states, the level of presence up to that brigade. And now, already, there has been a decision made that there will be a brigade in Lithuania, there will be a brigade in Latvia, and obviously, more presence means that there is more power in order to react immediately. So, you don’t have to reinforce as many land forces through the Suwalki gap as you had needed in case you have just battle groups. So that’s the first thing.
The second thing that was decided was to set up this new NATO command structure in all the Baltic states and to decrease the command structure level to the level of divisional size of command structure HQ. Which means that basically, you don’t have to have all the forces in place from the first day, but you have in place a working command structure which is able to reinforce all the needed forces in case of crisis. And the third thing, which I would say is maybe the most crucial thing, is the joining of Finland and Sweden to NATO. Because this basically closes the Baltic Sea to be like an internal NATO sea more or less.
And it enables us to move very quickly with air and navy assets if there would be some kind of NATO’s navy and air assets to Baltic regions if needed. So even if there would be some kind of leap in moving land forces through the Suwalki gap, you can close this gap with other assets like air force, navy, and that probably lessens…
So, I think these are like three most important things decided. And the fourth thing, which is related directly to the NATO element, is the new regional plans. And although the plans themselves are restricted and we don’t have the full visibility of what has been decided in there, I am quite certain that it has played through the scenario also of Suwalki gap.
And there are really these structures in place in order to act in case of Suwalki gap, this kind of closeness would happen. So, these are like four things in NATO terms. But also, as I said, there is this national approach and Estonia is currently investing a lot into our own defense.
We are investing heavily in longer-range fires; missiles and rockets. And the aim is actually to keep the adversary out of our country, not to give him the opportunity to cross the border at all. So, I think this is also a really important aspect if we speak about Suwalki gap challenge as a general.
You also have an unratified border agreement with Russia, yes? Can you talk about that?
There is not really much to tell. There are some details which we still haven’t been able to kind of sign. But I think what is important is that last year Estonia and all other Baltic states have made a lot of effort into securing the borderline. So, we are really fencing our borderline with Russia. We are building the bunkers on the borderline in order to be also prepared in any case scenarios. And I think this is really what is important.
So, the paperwork doesn’t matter. The borderline is there anyway. It’s not ratified, but we implement it. We still implement and there is a clear understanding of where the borderline is.
Other than Suwalki and the border issue, what do you think Estonia has as a risk or danger?
Well, Russia is obviously a danger. Or may threaten Russia. There is no dispute about that. And in Estonia’s case, obviously the landline with Russia is much shorter than in other Baltic states because we have this lake Peipus on the borderline. Well, Finland is like in the north and there is a big sea in between. But I think the eastern border having this big lake in between gives us more visibility of how the troops are moving. So, there are just like a couple of places where actually Russians can cross the borderline, like on land terms. And it’s from our perspective, obviously gives us the opportunity to control those spots more than it would be to have the landline throughout our borders. I guess, that’s quite an important aspect also.
And what do you think former Primer Minister Kaja Kallas will change in the European Union, like foreign policy direction or these measurements, precautions? Because you have all of these threats and you have the experience of Russia. For Estonia, I think this is a very important role internationally. What do you think she’s going to bring?
I really think, this is my personal opinion, that there won’t be really a big change, of course, in the European Union due to that. Because Kaja Kallas and her kind of approach has been very clear and visible throughout the past years when she has been the Prime Minister. And in the international sphere, I think her judgment of the situation has been very highly valued.
So, I really think that she has to change the course of the European Union in any way because there have been many Estonian initiatives in the European Union already, which are on the way to be implemented in many ways.
