Wednesday, October 8, 2014

Alarm Over Russia Draws Volunteers to Defend Estonia ... Just in Case

On a recent weekend in an Estonian forest, a group of new recruits in army fatigues practiced maneuvers. A sergeant major barked out instructions and the unit changed formation, sometimes crawling in the dirt between birch trees.
But these weren’t professional soldiers: They were some of the hundreds of edgy Estonians who have flocked to a volunteer army in the months since neighboring Russia annexed part of Ukraine to the south.
Recruitment in the first half of this year doubled to 600 compared with 300 in the same period last year. The Estonian Defense League, or Kaitseliit, now has around 14,500 members in its fighting units, compared with around 3,800 in the professional military.
The surge is a sign of how Russia’s newly aggressive foreign policy is rattling people across Eastern Europe. It is echoed in the rising popularity of similar paramilitary forces like the Riflemen’s Unions of Lithuania and Poland and Latvia’s home guard.
The Kaitseliit is run by the Defense Department and its members are expected to report for duty in the event of a national crisis.
New volunteers for the Estonian Defense League prepare 
for training last month outside Tallinn. 
Liis Kangsepp/The Wall Street Journal
“I want to defend my homeland, my family,” said Kevin Ungro, an 18-year-old student, during a break in training. “The more people who know how to handle a gun, the better our chances of defending ourselves.”
In the woods outside Tallinn, students mix with doctors, chief executives and engineers, daubing each other’s faces in green and brown camouflage paint and checking each other’s helmet straps.
New Kaitseliit recruits take positions for battle training 
on Sept. 19. Liis Kangsepp/The Wall Street Journal
[...]
... The battle training, called “fire and movement,” is conducted by senior Kaitseliit members. They are hoping that such skills will help at least slow any invasion from the east.
Moscow talks regularly of a need to defend ethnic Russian minorities in nearby states, whose interests it claims are threatened by hostile governments from Tallinn to Kiev. Officials in the Baltics worry this could be used as a pretext for military aggression against them, as happened in Ukraine.
Kaitseliit recruit Helary Poolmaa practicing riot 
control. Liis Kangsepp/The Wall Street Journal
A quarter of Estonia’s population of 1.3 million is ethnic Russians.
Conflicts with Moscow are a recurring feature of the history of Estonia. It won its freedom from Russia after a war ending 1920, but was annexed again by the Soviets in 1940. Estonia regained independence in 1991 and joined the European Union and North Atlantic Treaty Organization in 2004, along with its Baltic neighbors...
Read the full story HERE.

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