Britain will commit an extra 1,000 troops and one new aircraft carrier to the defence of Estonia, British defence secretary has announced.
Britain already has about 1,700 personnel deployed in Estonia. Additional troops will be based in the UK, ready to fly out if deemed necessary.
As reported by The Guardian, British defence secretary Ben Wallace said the UK would “allocate a brigade” to Estonia, effectively an increase in the number of British troops available to about 3,000, saying it would be more efficient to base some of the forces at home and their equipment in Germany.
The commitment forms part of Nato’s revamped European defence force, which will comprise 300,000 troops across the continent placed at high readiness in case Russia threatens a military attack on any member of the alliance.
A substantial part of Britain’s commitment to the defence force announced at this week’s Madrid summit would be naval, Wallace added: “We will put in a huge amount of the Navy. I think we’ll dedicate one of the carrier groups to it.”
Eight Nato defence forces are based in eight countries on the eastern side of the alliance, from Estonia to Bulgaria, and on Wednesday Nato members agreed to increase them to the size of a brigade in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Germany has already agreed to increase its commitment to Lithuania, but faced criticism when it emerged that most of the extra 3,500 troops it was offering would be based on its own soil, ready to move east quickly if needed.
But Wallace defended the decision, and argued that a surprise attack by Russia on the Baltic country was unlikely. “You are not going to get a massive surprise,” he said, noting that Russia placed more than 100,000 troops on the borders of Ukraine for several months before it invaded in February.
Existing plans to defend Estonia and the other Baltic countries were outdated, Wallace said, because the existing plan was to allow “60 days to get the tanks there”.
But he added that Russia’s attack on Ukraine had changed everybody’s thinking: “Quite rightly, the Baltic states were saying, ‘Well, what we just witnessed in Ukraine was that if you wait five days, there’s no one left alive. So we don’t want to take the risk and wait until our car ferry gets across with the tanks.’”
