ILMAR RAAG ⟩ How to organize wartime evacuation in Estonia?

Photo: Margus Ansu

• In the most dangerous scenario, the adversary will exploit the panic of the people trying to flee.
• I would be in favor, in principle, of allowing the non-combatant population to leave Estonia.
• A crisis is a crisis because simple solutions don't work.

Ukraine, February 24, 2022. The war started in the morning, and by midday, a lane of congestion roughly 300 kilometers long had formed in western Ukraine, stretching from the crossing on the Polish border into the interior of Ukraine. Some people abandoned their cars and walked to the border, where total chaos reigned, security expert Ilmar Raag (The Right) writes.

This congestion lasted about three days, during which people lived in their cars, ran out of food, while gas stations along the road ran out of fuel.

This evacuation was completely spontaneous, as the country's leadership had given no guidance to evacuate. The reality was even worse. In several regions that saw fighting reach them on the very first day, no state-led evacuation had been even planned. In the first two weeks of the war, at least 10 percent of the population left the country. Later, another 10 percent.

The subsequent spontaneous behavior of people showed that in the cities in the path of the war in areas where the war approached more slowly, a total of about 60–70 percent of people left independently when the fighting arrived. Often in panic.

Ukrainians suspect that panic was also deliberately provoked by the Russians, for example by organizing explosions in residential areas. This may be plausible, as throughout 2021, the Russians had conducted various chaos-inducing operations in Ukraine. These included an increase in electricity prices being followed by immediately organized protests, demonstrations staged under the banner of Ukrainian nationalists with hired thugs among the protesters who were meant to start fights with the police. In February 2022, there were 400 bomb threats, and so on.

Let's talk about Estonia

Typical active shaping of the battlefield for war through a gray zone can begin up to a year before the start of actual operations. Here, we distinguish between a lukewarm hybrid war, which is already ongoing, and its active phase, where military preparations can be seen on the other side of the border, and, at the same time, sabotage, demonstrations, information and cyber attacks, etc., on this side of the border.

Many people here are already experiencing high levels of anxiety, even though there's no real reason yet. But imagine a scenario where a couple of car bombs go off, and at the same time newspapers run front-page headlines asking, «Is this war?» Even if Russia didn't actually have a concrete attack plan at that moment, this will trigger the first wave of spontaneous evacuation – mainly by those who have the means for it. We could then expect up to 5 percent of the population to start moving, just in case. That would mean nearly 50,000 people leaving Estonia.

Based on the Ukrainian example, we would have about 200,000 people on the move on the first day of the war, about half of whom would try to get on some ship.

Most of them will try to get on a ship to go to Sweden, but Tallink's capacity will already be insufficient at this stage to smoothly handle such a large number of passengers. As long as the road to Poland is open, a smaller portion will try to leave by land.

Next, the aspect of public threat assessment comes into play. What does the official threat assessment say? Does the state see the possibility of the crisis escalating? This would trigger the state's readiness escalation plan, which in turn would provoke the continuation of spontaneous evacuation.

In the most dangerous scenario, the adversary will exploit the panic of the people trying to flee to overwhelm the resources of emergency services and public order enforcement. This means that the adversary can relatively easily organize more explosions, unidentified drone attacks, etc., in the days leading up to the actual invasion. Based on the Ukrainian example, we would have about 200,000 people on the move on the first day of the war, about half of whom would try to get on some ship. At the same time, at least a certain number of the adversary's saboteurs would be operating in Tallinn and Harju County, whose task is to aggravate chaos, as this would hinder the Estonian defense forces from carrying out operations.

There is a very high probability that traffic in the Suwalki corridor will be hampered and, in the worst-case scenario, maritime traffic in the Gulf of Finland will also be restricted. We can only imagine massive congestion around Tallinn, because the authorities' capacity, no matter how great, will of course be insufficient to handle such a crowd.

What should we do?

First of all, we need to understand that nothing about this will be easy or convenient. It would be an incredibly difficult situation. At that moment, I would most likely be with the Tallinn unit of the Kaitseliit, and in some way, I would have to help those people.

My starting point for planning would be this: if I assume the escalation will continue, then I must recognize that a shortage of all resources will soon follow. That, in turn, means that everyone not directly involved in national defense should clear out. The more emergency rooms in Tallinn hospitals are occupied with civilian trauma cases, the less capacity there will be to save the lives of those directly defending Estonia. The same applies to food supplies. Under conditions of limited trade and transport, Tallinn won't be able to feed all these people for long.

Much more categorically, I would like to see priority given to the evacuation of the families of members of the defense forces, members of the Kaitseliit, police officers, etc., if necessary.

I would therefore be in favor, in principle, of allowing the non-combatant population to leave Estonia. In such a way that they retain as painless an opportunity as possible to return, for example, a month later.

Also, much more categorically, I would like to see priority given to the evacuation of the families of members of the defense forces, members of the Kaitseliit, police officers, etc., if necessary. This, too, is a lesson from Ukraine, because if a combatant man or woman has to worry about what will happen to their children or parents, they are not very focused fighters. Additionally, the lesson from Ukraine's occupied territories shows that repressions will not only target «hostile state officials» but also their family members. Therefore, at least in my unit, I will create a team that deals with evacuating family members out of Estonia.

Similarly, it is clear that I would not allow any SUVs, pickups, or vans on those ships. Estonia will need them.

How to organize the protection and guidance of the people who have started moving? Theoretically, there are four options:

1. Tell people to go back home and that the state will only evacuate those who are in real danger of ending up in a combat zone. (This is not to be taken seriously, because in such a situation, the state will not be trusted from the start.)
2. Direct people in a dispersed manner across Estonia. (This probably won't work either, because the vast majority of people definitely want to reach some foreign country.)
3. We swallow the chaos in Tallinn and let the Tallink ships do their usual job. Shooting from the hip, I would guess that with some reorganization of operations, Tallink is capable of getting 10,000 people a day to Sweden. That means that in about 10 days major congestion will be over. (The main problem with this might be that if a real war with Shahed drone strikes starts at the same time, the civilian casualties could be significant. Half of people's anger will be directed at the government for failing to ensure more normal evacuation conditions. Furthermore, we understand that if something happens to even one of the Tallink ships, the whole scheme could collapse.)
4. Dispersed evacuation with active maritime transport support from friends in Sweden, Denmark, and Germany. In fact, all available ships in the Baltic Sea should be mobilized to assist in our evacuation, under the protection of naval vessels from those same countries. All possible Estonian ports should be used to maximize the dispersion of the entire process. The core of this solution lies in international cooperation. It sounds beautiful, but the reality would certainly not be so pretty. (I can imagine how everyone's hair would stand on end at the political level if we said we were going to start planning the evacuation of nearly a million people from the Baltic states by sea in the event of a possible war. «That's just fueling war panic,» they would say. Yet, in the event of a real crisis, something similar would inevitably be done anyway.)

A crisis is a crisis because simple solutions don't work. It's impossible to get through this process without pain. Therefore, it really is better to invest in deterrence together with our neighbors now than to actually have to face this problem. If the crisis were to last longer than six months, half of the people would probably not return to Estonia. That is also a lesson from Ukraine.

However, the greatest folly would be not to analyze the Ukrainian experience more broadly.