Further British armed forces are being deployed to Estonia “earlier than planned”, defence minister James Heappey told the House of Commons this afternoon.
Estonia, bordered to the East by Russia, was occupied by the Soviet Union in 1940, and by Nazi Germany in 1941. The Red Army retook Estonia in 1944 and it remained a USSR republic until 1991.
Many experts on the Baltic states—which include the fellow ex-Soviet states of Latvia and Lithuania alongside Estonia— have expressed concerns that Russia’s belligerence in Ukraine could extend to them in future.
In response to an Urgent Question, Heappey told MPs earlier today that: “In addition to the Royal Tank Regiment battle group that has been in place in Estonia for the last six months, the Royal Welsh battlegroup will be arriving in Estonia earlier than planned to double up our force levels and those doubled-up force levels remain indefinitely.
“They will be augmented by the headquarters of 12 Mechanised Brigade, meaning that the United Kingdom will have an armoured brigade in Estonia reassuring one of our closest Nato allies.”
While he stressed that “We must all in this House be clear that British and Nato troops should not, must not, play an active role in Ukraine,” he emphasised that the government planned to “explore all that we can do to support the Ukrainians themselves over the next few days”.
“We must all be clear what the risk of miscalculation could be and how existential that could very quickly become if people miscalculate and things escalate unnecessarily,” he went on.
