Tori says Russia is stepping up pressure and Estonia must prepare

Russia has decided to step up the pace of its activities this year, and Estonia must be prepared for the possibility of a long-term threat, Government Office coordination director Erkki Tori told ERR’s “First Studio” programme.

Future Defence Minister Martin Herem has said that Estonia’s threat picture is currently fragmented, with different perceptions of danger in different parts of the country. Tori said this could mean that Russia’s regime and its ambitions towards Estonia and the West as a whole have not changed.

“Even if we do not see a conventional military threat today, Russia will not change in the long term, and we must be prepared for that. We cannot rest on our laurels,” Tori said.

According to Tori, Herem may want to speed up preparations as defence minister and create a greater sense of urgency. If something can be done in one day, he said, it should not be delayed for two.

Russia is stepping up the pace

Companies and other parts of the national defence system have recently come under attack in Germany, Poland and Lithuania. Tori said the incidents could form a pattern and that attention should be directed towards Russia.

“It is certainly possible that random events are also mixed into this pattern, but it is clear that Russia has decided to step up the pace this year,” he said.

A production building belonging to Milrem Robotics in Tallinn caught fire in mid-August, and sabotage is suspected. Tori said the incident was being investigated with the possibility of Russian involvement in mind, but that it was too early to draw conclusions.

He added that the Milrem case was not an isolated incident in Estonia, citing the burning of the Slava Ukraini restaurant as another example.

Estonia has worked for years to make its territory a difficult environment for an adversary to operate in, Tori said, adding that the country’s internal security situation could be considered safe.

Russia is probably trying to send a message that Estonia should stop helping Ukraine. Since Estonia does not plan to end its assistance, the question is how far Russia is prepared to escalate its actions.

Tori said much would depend on Estonia’s response, including how many perpetrators are caught, how much responsibility is attributed, how much is done through international cooperation and how effectively Russia’s activities are restricted.

All allies are targets

Russian President Vladimir Putin told US President Donald Trump on Tuesday that he had no aggressive plans towards Europe. Tori said Russia uses individuals to conceal its non-conventional activities, allowing it to distance itself from them easily.

“It can simply say that nothing exploded, nothing caught fire, nothing was hacked and no disinformation campaigns were carried out. That is its way of operating,” Tori said.

He said Estonia therefore had a duty to make clear to its allies that all of them were equally at risk.

When Russia is described as an existential threat to Europe, Tori said, this means that Russia wants to dominate Europe and is prepared to use military force to achieve that.

Estonia has kept its border with Russia open, although it has closed some border crossing points and restricted their opening hours. “We carry out full customs checks at the border on both people and goods,” Tori said.

He said there was currently no direct threat to Estonia’s border crossing points. The crossings therefore remained open to allow people and goods not covered by sanctions to move to some extent, but Estonia was ready to respond if the situation changed.