Estonia will not fall into the Russian ‘trap’ and overreact to hybrid attacks, says defence minister

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Hanno Pevkur, the Estonian Minister of Defense, speaks to reporters in front of an M142 artillery rocket system during a static display in Tapa, Estonia, on Jan. 6, 2023. (U.S. Army photo by Spc. Charles Leitner)

NATO SUMMIT 2024 – Estonia’s defence minister says Russia is using hybrid attacks across NATO to distract individual countries from how to best support Ukraine, so it is an “obligation” not to “fall into this trap” and overreact.

Hybrid attacks are “a permanent situation for us”, Hanno Pevkur he said today, citing cyberattacks and the vandalism of a minister’s and a journalist’s car as just some of the incidents the Estonian government has blamed on Russia. “So this is something that is in Russia’s game plan.”

“We know they can do it; we know they will. Now the question is how we respond. If we raise the issue at a very high level, of course they are happy because then we are dealing with our internal affairs and not with Ukraine,” he told an audience at a joint Politico and Welt event on the sidelines of the NATO summit in Washington. “That is exactly what Russia wants: that all European countries deal with their internal problems and not with Ukraine.”

“Hundreds of people are dying in Ukraine, that should be our main focus,” he said.

Pevkur’s comments come weeks after NATO issued a public warning about alleged Russian hybrid activities across Europe, including “sabotage, acts of violence, cyber and electronic interference, disinformation campaigns and other hybrid operations.”

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“We support the allies affected and stand with them in solidarity. We will act individually and collectively against these events and continue to work closely together,” the statement said.

NATO membership gives any country the ability to invoke the alliance’s Article 5 mutual assistance clause in response to an attack, but hybrid activities are inherently harder to categorize and attribute. As such, it is unclear when a hybrid attack crosses the line into an act worthy of Article 5. (Article 5 has only been invoked once before, by the United States after al-Qaeda’s 9/11 attacks in 2001.)

In a later briefing at the Estonian embassy, ​​Pevkur said the decision on whether a hybrid attack warrants invoking Article 5 rests with the attacked party, which will then turn to NATO to discuss how to respond. “So each country has to make its own assessment,” he said. However, he said they should be very cautious.

“Of course we have to act proportionately and not overreact,” he said. “We have to remain calm because we can deal with such attacks. So if joint action is required, we have all the mechanisms for that,” from bilateral to multilateral agreements. Invoking Article 5 for too small an issue, he said, could play into Russia’s hands politically.

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“So I would say let’s keep a clear head here,” he said. “As long as the country can handle it, my suggestion is to keep it at this level.”

At the same time, Pevkur said that NATO would not tolerate Russia attempting to seize territory in the east, as Moscow did in eastern Ukraine in 2014. Even then, it was not a clearly defined military action.

“We will start defending countries from the first centimeter,” he said.

Estonia examines possible bunker locations

Elsewhere during the embassy meeting, Pevkur gave an update on the Baltics plan announced in January, which calls for the creation of a physical defence line of bunkers along the eastern borders of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.

The plan calls for hundreds of fortified fighting positions, costing a total of around 60 million euros. In May, Estonia’s then-Defense Minister General Martin Herem said the aim of the bunker system was not to stop a Russian invasion – a “stupid” goal, said Herem – but to make it so that the Baltic countries could better counter advancing Russian forces.

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Pevkur pointed out that the project is still in its early stages. Estonia hopes to have identified and clarified locations for bunker sites by the end of the year. It will also have to be clarified whether these will be built on public or private land. Perhaps Estonia will then be able to build one or two bunker sites.

“We’ll see how it goes,” he said.