EDITORIAL ⟩ The mine under Pevkur’s seat

„Are landmines like planks, which deliver a blow edgewise on their own when the horned ones step onto our land?” Caricature by Urmas Nemvalts. Photo: Urmas Nemvalts.

• Estonia is withdrawing from the convention banning anti-personnel mines.
• The construction of the defense zone is dragging.
• Building bunkers shouldn't be difficult.

We have good news and bad news from the field of defense. Since the bad news has been dominating lately, let's start with the good: the Baltic states and Poland announced on Tuesday that they are withdrawing from the Ottawa Treaty, which bans the use of anti-personnel mines. It's great that the countries of our region made this decision together.

Estonia joined the Ottawa Treaty in 2004, when it was fashionable in the world to talk about the so-called end of history: that a major war was no longer likely and that regional conflicts were more like «humane precision operations», as had been the then recent NATO operation against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia to prevent ethnic cleansing in Kosovo.

The war in Ukraine has convincingly proven that Francis Fukuyama was wrong about his «end of history» narrative. The last few years of the war have demonstrated the importance of trench warfare, as it was in World War I. The vast majority of the occupied territory was captured by the Russian Federation in the first weeks of the war, and the vast majority of successful counter-operations (with the exception of the Kursk operation) were conducted by Ukraine in the first year of the war. A grueling trench warfare has followed, in which minefields and drones play a significant role.

It is in our national interests to quickly deploy landmines, given the aggressiveness of our neighbor, the experience of Ukraine, and the topography of our border zone, which allows us to successfully stop the enemy with the help of minefields. Of course, it is also necessary to build fortifications that, together with the mines, would form an effective defense zone. And here, unfortunately, comes the bad news.

The defense ministers of the three Baltic states approved the plan to establish a defense zone already back in January 2024, but further work in Estonia, led by Defense Minister Hanno Pevkur (Reform Party), has unfortunately fallen behind schedule.

The topic also came up at Monday's ammunition procurement press conference. According to the plan, about 600 bunkers should be built on the Estonian-Russian border, but so far the venture has not progressed beyond testing prototypes. This is not about building a nuclear reactor, building reinforced concrete bunkers is nothing unprecedented. Taking into account the experience of the world wars, such a long testing period seems redundant.

The Ministry of Defense still has no overview of when the Estonian section of the defense zone might be completed and how much it will cost.

The Ministry of Defense still has no overview of when the Estonian section of the defense zone might be completed and how much it will cost. Although the defense zone project was completed already in the summer of 2023, and according to the original plan, the locations of the support points were to be determined by the end of last year, at Monday's press briefing by the Ministry of Defense, we heard from Magnus-Valdemar Saar, director general of the Center for Defense Investments (RKIK), that the locations are still being specified.

Inevitably, the thought arises that the slow pace is due to poor management, because the most powerful component of the process has so far been talk. Let us also recall that after Eston Kohver was kidnapped from the border, Pevkur, then minister of the interior, promised to build out the eastern border. Ten and a half years later, the eastern border has still not been completed.