At the sidelines of the NATO Summit in Vilnius, Minister of Defence of Estonia Hanno Pevkur and UK Secretary of State for Defence Ben Wallace met bilaterally to discuss the implementation of the new regional plans and to sign a joint declaration outlining the bilateral steps between Estonia and the United Kingdom.
„For Estonia, it is very important that we are moving forward with the integration of the UK brigade into our division. We know exactly which units will come to Estonia and we have a plan for exercises to rehearse reinforcement – how the brigade allocated to our defence will move to Estonia and how it will operate within the Estonian division,“ said Minister of Defence Hanno Pevkur, adding that this was the realisation of a long-term goal for Estonia. „Our Chief of Defence has to know exactly which units and what kind of equipment he can count on in wartime,“ said Pevkur.
Additionally, the ministers of defence agreed on the embedding of staff officers into the command of the Estonian division.
„These two main points – reinforcement exercises and UK officers in the command structure – are an important part of strengthening Estonian defence capability and putting the new regional plans into practice. On our side, we will continue the accelerated development of our infrastructure to support both the UK’s permanent presence and reinforcements in times of need,“ explained Pevkur.
Joint statement text (548.41 KB, PDF)
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Photo: Kaitseminister Pevkur kohtus UK kaitseministri Wallace'iga (12.07.2023) | Flickr