It was the kind of display only NATO can mount. Several hundred Italian troops from the alliance’s Baltic air policing mission stood in formation at Estonia’s Ämari Air Base, more than 1,500 miles from home. Some of the world’s most powerful weaponry loomed behind them on the windswept tarmac: an F-35 fighter jet, a SAMP/T air defense missile launcher, a Typhoon Eurofighter, and a CAEW radar surveillance plane.
Just days after three Russian MiG-31 fighter jets violated Estonian airspace, loitering for 12 minutes before being escorted out by NATO aircraft, Italian defense minister Guido Crosetto had flown in to thank the Italian pilots who intercepted the planes. A big bear of a man with a shaved head, he and Estonian defense minister Hanno Pevkur stood together on the runway to announce that Italy would extend its rotational presence in Estonia, leaving its jets and air defense system at Ämari through spring 2026.
“If [the Russians] are looking for a response,” Crosetto declared, “this is it—our strengthened presence here.”
His determination seemed all the more striking coming from one of the founders, along with Prime Minister Georgia Meloni, of the right-wing populist party, Brothers of Italy, that many once worried would be skeptical of NATO and hesitant to confront Russia. “We’re here,” Crosetto proclaimed, “to show with our physical presence that we are an alliance, and we work as an alliance.”
The MiG incursion in Estonia was just one in a spate of Russian violations of European airspace this fall. In early September, 21 Russian drones crashed or were shot down over Poland. Four days later, a Russian drone was intercepted over Romania. The morning before the ministers met at Ämari, more drones were sighted in nearby Baltic Sea countries, buzzing over airports in Oslo and Copenhagen. Other swarms have appeared in the weeks since over France, Germany, and Lithuania.
Americans have been preoccupied with the shutdown, but many in Europe wonder if the war in Ukraine might finally be spilling out across the continent. At a time of growing transatlantic tensions and questions about NATO, would Americans take note of the danger? And how would the West respond?
Few nations have a bigger stake in NATO than tiny Estonia, with a population of 1.4 million, and its two Baltic sister states, Latvia and Lithuania, all three long overshadowed by their giant neighbor, Russia. Tsarist Russia fought Europe on Estonian territory in the 16th century. Russia conquered and ruled much of the Baltic region through the 18th and 19th centuries. A brief period of Estonian independence between the two world wars gave way to a brutal Soviet occupation in 1940.
“Every Estonian family lost someone under communist rule,” one young woman told me. An officer shot by a Russian firing squad, an intellectual deported to the gulag, a farmer run off his land and hunted down in the forest: altogether, roughly one-fifth of the population was murdered or dispersed.
The Russian incursion last month came as no surprise. Estonia has been contending with Russian gray-zone warfare—cyberattacks, sabotage, drone overflights, and undersea cable cutting—since what many call its “re-independence” in 1991. Today, citizens and politicians put a premium on resilience, and no political faction questions the national focus on preparedness: robust defense spending, mandatory conscription, a large volunteer defense force, and extensive civilian resilience training. Tallinn plans to spend 5.4 percent of GDP on core military needs in 2026—well above the 3.5 percent now pledged by most NATO members.
But even against this backdrop, Estonians were stunned in 2021 to hear Vladimir Putin declare his imperialist aims in Europe: not just to reclaim Ukraine but also to push NATO back to its pre-1997 borders. For Estonia, which joined the alliance in 2004, this would mean the removal of all NATO troops and weaponry, leaving it to its own modest resources in the face of an aggressive, revanchist Russia.
No one I spoke with in Estonia thought the MiG incursion marked the beginning of a hot war in Europe. “There is no acute military danger on our borders,” Jonatan Vseviov, secretary general of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, told me. “The Russians are stuck in Ukraine, and they do not want a military confrontation with NATO—we know that with certainty.”
The all but universal consensus in Tallinn is that the Kremlin’s goal was to cow Ukraine’s European supporters—Denmark, Norway, Estonia, and Poland are among Kyiv’s staunchest NATO allies—sowing fear among the public and concentrating minds on homeland defense rather than aiding Ukraine.
Still, no one doubts the longer-term danger for Europe. “Putin wants to make life as we know it impossible,” explained Vseviov, a dark-haired man with a square brow who used to be Estonia’s ambassador to the U.S., “by dividing NATO and creating a buffer zone on his border—weak, divided, corrupt countries. This has been one of his top goals for three decades: to ensure that democracy, free markets, and the rule of law can’t seep across the border to Russia.”
A block away, at the defense ministry, officials monitoring the Russian threat have been stunned to see Moscow mounting a historic military buildup even as it wages the largest and deadliest war in Europe since World War II.
“The Kremlin is losing 30,000 soldiers a month in Ukraine but still managing to replace them by recruiting 30,000 men each month,” says Kristjan Mäe, the slender, sandy-haired head of the ministry’s policy planning department. Russian defense spending more than quadrupled from 2021 to 2025, and most of its 1.3 million active-duty personnel are now battle-hardened. “To run the war and the buildup in parallel is very significant,” Mäe notes. “Even as it wages war in Ukraine, Russia is preparing for a larger war in Europe.” Still, he agrees, there will be no military attack as long as Russia is tied up in Ukraine.
Everyone I meet with in Tallinn makes the same point about the war in Ukraine: Ukrainians are fighting for them, defending Europe, and weakening the Russian military. Several quoted former Estonian spy chief Mikk Marran: “Every Russian tank destroyed in Ukraine is one less Russian tank that could someday invade Estonia.”
Estonia has led every European effort to support Ukraine and often acts as a gadfly, urging others in the European Union and NATO to provide more aid. But everyone I met in Tallinn had a slightly different idea of what it might mean for Estonia once the fighting in Ukraine ends.
Mäe’s worst nightmare is a Russian victory. “That would open the door to something much worse,” he explains. Moscow would likely move tens of thousands of troops from the front in Ukraine to the new military bases it’s building on the border of Estonia. It might take a few years to regroup and replenish, but Russia is already stockpiling weapons. Worst of all, Mäe says, “victory would prove to the Kremlin that despite the cost of war, the reward is even greater.”
Yet even a Russian loss would be unlikely to bring relief in Tallinn. “There will be no end to history,” the foreign ministry’s Vseviov explains. “We will still need to confront Russia. It just may be a little easier if Moscow loses. That would put us in a better position to continue the struggle.”
The bigger question hovering over these scenarios is what NATO will do if Russia attacks. One expert I met told me an old Estonian joke: “Of course, NATO will come to our defense. They’ll send one instructor.” But not even she seemed particularly worried. Across the board, somewhat surprisingly to me, everyone I spoke to was confident that the alliance would come through. In the event of a gray-zone attack, there might be some questions: would NATO agree that a red line had been crossed, and would relief arrive quickly enough? But no one seemed to doubt that the alliance would eventually deliver.
“It been the guiding principle of our foreign policy since independence,” Mäe explained, “to make sure we never again find ourselves alone.” Officials and independent experts alike pointed to a long list of what they see as reassuring evidence: the NATO contingent of British and French troops stationed at the Tapa Army Base, the air policing mission that operates 24/7 out of Ämari, the NATO forward presence in Latvia and Lithuania, the fact that Finland and Sweden have joined the alliance, aligning all Baltic Sea capitals in a like-minded state of readiness. “And all this is in peacetime,” Vseviov underlines. “The only challenge is making this certainty credible to Moscow—and we work very hard on that.”
Of course, he and others recognize that things are changing within the alliance. “For 80 years,” Vseviov reflects, “America proposed, and Europe reacted. Sometimes we agreed, sometimes we disagreed, or hesitated. But it was all American ideas, implemented by American leadership with American capabilities.” Now things are changing, and Europe finds itself in a new position. Many Estonians are frustrated by the pace of change across the continent—the military buildup and the understanding of the threat from Russia. But they can do only so much to spur other Europeans to fill the gaps left by ebbing American interest.
I press the question at every meeting. “Are you confident that America will come through? And if the U.S. hesitates, can the rest of NATO do what would be needed here?” One Estonian official who declined to be quoted speculated about the theoretical consequences of a U.S. withdrawal from the alliance. “If NATO had to defend Estonia tonight, it would be ready and up to the task. Without the U.S. and Canada, it will be five to 10 years before Europe is ready.”
But no one discussing the situation admitted to any doubt. “Of course,” Mäe concedes, “any crack in NATO unity sends a dangerous signal to our adversaries.” Still, he insists that Washington has repeatedly reassured Tallinn, and he ticks off dates and venues when Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth committed the U.S. to stand by the Baltic states. “We Europeans should focus on what we need to be doing,” Mäe maintains, “how we can strengthen the alliance.”
Ultimately, it’s hard for a visiting American not to marvel at the Estonian determination to look on the bright side. “You don’t understand,” Vseviov tries to clarify for me. “Russia has always been a problem for us or occupied us. But being afraid is no cure. Think about the Japanese living in an earthquake zone. You can’t live in fear. You prepare, as we have prepared by tying ourselves to the European Union and NATO.”
The post Estonia in the Crosshairs appeared first on Washington Monthly.
Continue reading...