Mart Laar says Jäger crisis tested Estonia’s young defence forces

Asso Kommer, the central figure in the Jäger crisis that erupted in Estonia in the summer of 1993 and ended with police officers being wounded in an exchange of fire, said he could have fled the country but did not because he did not consider himself guilty, ERR’s Vikerraadio reported. Former Prime Minister Mart Laar said the crisis tested the defence forces of the young Estonian state.

Rebuilding Estonia after the restoration of independence in 1991 was difficult, with disagreements over how the country should be defended and how its new defence forces should be created. Troops from the occupying power remained in Estonia until August 1994.

The most tense period came in the summer of 1993, when the so-called Jäger crisis erupted.

Estonia held its first parliamentary elections after regaining independence in September 1992. Isamaa won a convincing victory, and 32-year-old Mart Laar formed the government as prime minister.

Laar recalled that the US Embassy had offered crisis-management training to him and his team before he took office. He described it as the most practical training available at the time, saying the government was occupied almost exclusively with resolving crises.

He said the two most important pieces of advice were not to panic and to remember that even a bad decision was better than indecision. When he first entered his office as prime minister, the telephone rang and he was told that there had been heavy shooting near the Jäger company.

The Defence League began to be re-established a year before independence was restored. Riho Ühtegi, who later became a major general and led the Defence League for years, was involved from the beginning.

Ühtegi said the Defence League had long been viewed as a troublemaker by the authorities because it had kept out of political games from the start. In 1991, after a series of events culminating in the August 20 coup attempt, a parallel initiative called the Defence Initiative Centre emerged.

The Defence Forces General Staff authorised the centre to create a unit with an alternative training system. This became the Jäger company, which was largely based on conscription but used a training model partly resembling that of the Israeli army. Command was more decentralised, weapons were handled more freely and members were expected to carry them at all times. Its approach to combat also emphasised flexible tactics rather than following orders mechanically.

The company was led by the young Asso Kommer, whose interest in defence dated back to the 1980s. He said the original plan was to create a coastal defence unit, with the name Jäger taken from the Scandinavian example. The unit’s headquarters was established in Pullapää.

Kommer recalled that in the young state, different institutions often did not know what the others were doing, with politicians and the General Staff holding their own views of the situation.

Ühtegi said the crisis reached its peak when the Jäger company was sent to Paldiski to take over a military compound. When the unit arrived to carry out the order, local Russians were unaware of the plan, and an armed confrontation eventually developed.