TOKYO: The head of Estonia’s military said on Thursday (Mar 28) that his country needs to double defence spending over the next two years to stockpile enough munitions to inflict a decisive defeat on any Russian invasion force.
General Martin Herem said neither the threat of a nuclear response nor the prospect of significant casualties would deter President Vladimir Putin if he chose to attack Russia’s small Baltic neighbour, which would be devastated unless he was driven back fast.
“If you show your face over my border, the decisive victory must come very quickly: not by months and years, but days and weeks,” Herem said in an interview in Japan, where he was meeting defence officials. “If we really believe that it may come in three years, then we have to make decisions today.”
Putin on Wednesday explicitly denied that Russia had designs on any NATO member, but his full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 has made Western countries nervous that he could seek to restore Moscow’s control of much of the former Soviet Union, or go even further.
Estonia, once a Soviet republic, has already increased its defence budget to around 3 per cent of gross domestic product, a leader among members of the US-led NATO alliance, since Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014.
