Training to Fight Russia: How a Volunteer Force is Growing in Estonia

The ambush came at dawn. Moments before, the only sound in the frigid forest of Klooga, 40 km west of the Estonian capital Tallinn, had been light snoring coming from beneath a handful of camouflaged tarps. But seconds after machine-gun fire broke their sleep, several fighters erupted from their makeshift shelters and began returning fire. Flashes from their rifles illuminated the still dark woods, while blue smoke poured from a bomb intended to obscure the enemy’s path.

Within minutes, the battle was over. Although the outnumbered fighters did not manage to vanquish the opposing force, Kaia, an accountant who had left her baby at home that weekend, was pleased with the training exercise. “They did pretty well,” she said of the volunteers in the Estonian Defense League (EDL) she was helping instruct. “They stayed calm, and they held their ground.”

The Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania have been preparing to do the same. A shared border with Russia, and a painful history of Soviet occupation that began in the 1940s and saw the deportation and imprisonment of hundreds of thousands of citizens, spurred all three nations to join NATO once they regained independence in the 1990s. It has also led them to adopt a broad, society-wide approach to defense that has proved especially relevant more recently, as Russia has ramped up disinformation efforts in the region. Nowhere is that more evident than in Estonia, where 15,000 ordinary citizens like Kaia spend several weekends each year training in guerrilla warfare as part of the EDL. And since Russia invaded Ukraine in February, heightened fears that the Baltics could be the Kremlin’s next target have spurred thousands more to sign up.

“We are not conscripts. We are not regular army,” said Henri, 20, a participant in the Klooga “ambush” who works in sales. (Most members speaking with TIME preferred not to give their last names as a security precaution.) “We are ordinary Estonian men and women ready to put our blood on the line for every inch a possible occupier would want to gain of our land.”

Read more about the Estonian Defense League: https://ti.me/3jhk6EV
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