Britain has reduced its military footprint in Estonia by hundreds of troops and to fewer than ten tanks despite pledging to increase it to tackle the rising threat from Russia, The Times can disclose.
The military’s financial problems are deemed by allies to be so severe that the UK is struggling to meet its commitments to Nato’s eastern flank, a former commander of the Estonian defence forces has claimed.
Riho Terras, now an MEP, told Times Radio that the UK appeared unable to put together a brigade-sized force, typically around 3,000 to 5,000 troops, for an exercise in the spring and it concerned him the UK and others were not “taking seriously our defence”.
“The UK has difficulties to put together one brigade to participate in operations. I see it in Estonia every day,” he said.
He said the UK was not expected to be able to send a brigade-sized force to Exercise Hedgehog, one of the biggest Nato exercises in the Baltics, in May this year.
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Asked if this was worrying, he said: “Of course it concerns me that we are not taking seriously our defence.
“The UK is not coming with the full power to the exercises because they have problems with the financing,” he added. Terras was commander of the armed forces until 2018.
Separately, defence sources said that the UK has about 1,000 British troops in Estonia — a reduction of 650 troops since April 2022, when there were 1,650 personnel in Estonia.
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One local source also confirmed there were fewer than ten British Challenger tanks in the country, in addition to other armoured vehicles.
In June 2022, at the Nato summit in Madrid, Ben Wallace, then the defence secretary, said that an extra 1,000 UK soldiers would be committed to Estonia to create a brigade-sized force of about 2,650 troops.
It was briefed at the time that a few hundred extra soldiers could be sent to the country to run the new one-star headquarters — with a brigadier in charge — with the rest of them based in the UK but ready to fly to the country within days.
However, instead of sending more troops to Estonia since then, the MoD has reduced its footprint in the country and its Nato commitment to about 1,000 troops, back to how it was before the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
As the UK decided against having a brigade-sized force permanently positioned in the country, it is understood the government instead pledged to send a brigade-sized force to exercises in Estonia. However, Terras suggested the UK was also struggling to do this.
Meanwhile, Germany plans to send a full brigade of more than 5,000 troops permanently to Lithuania by 2027 as part of its Nato commitment.
One diplomatic source pushed back on Terras’s remarks, however, saying “deployability is key”, suggesting the ability of the troops to react to any threat was better now than in earlier years.
Terras’s comments will raise questions as to how the UK would be able to contribute any significant troops to a peacekeeping force in Ukraine should a peace deal be agreed.
Matthew Savill, director of military sciences at the Royal United Services Institute, said last week that if the UK deployed a 5,000-strong force to Ukraine for the long term then it would probably have an impact on its Nato commitments.
Mike Martin, a Liberal Democrat MP and former army officer, said: “I think the government has to be quite careful about the signals it sends to Russia, saying you are going to increase troops while actually reducing them — exposing a gap between words and deeds sends exactly the wrong signal to Vladimir Putin.”
John Healey, the defence secretary, met his Estonian counterpart at the Ministry of Defence on Wednesday where he discussed the UK’s “ironclad commitment” to the country.
Healey said in a briefing to journalists that British troops were “highly valued” in Estonia. He said: “They work together, we train together, we deploy together and we plan together.”
He said that UK troops with their Estonian allies were “on the front line” and “reinforcing that eastern flank on the Russian border and is a really important part of Nato’s defence posture”.
