NATO Battlegroup Estonia

Press conference between NATO units and the Estonian armed forces in September 2017 in Tapa

British soldiers with Challenger 2 main battle tanks during an exercise as part of the Enhanced Forward Presence in October 2017

The NATO Battlegroup Estonia is the task force of the North Atlantic Pact Organization ( NATO ) in Estonia . It is currently under construction and is to achieve a strength of 1,000 men with rotating units from different NATO member countries. The task force is under the leadership of Great Britain .

background

The battlegroup is being set up within the framework of the NATO Enhanced Forward Presence (eFP) decided by the Alliance . This is intended to assure the Baltic countries and Poland of the support of the alliance and a deterrent against Russia . A NATO battle group will be set up in each of the four countries in the course of the year.

The eFP was decided at the alliance summit in July 2016. The “leading nations” are Germany in Lithuania , Great Britain in Estonia, the USA in Poland and Canada in Latvia . Russia sees the deployment of the eFP as a provocation.

deployment

After Great Britain initially wanted to send around 500 soldiers, the Ministry of Defense increased the number to 800 in October 2016. This made the mission for the United Kingdom the largest military operation on the Russian border since the end of the Cold War .

Since April 2017, France has participated with 300 soldiers, including foreign legionnaires .

The battalion is stationed at the Tapa base , around 120 km from the Russian border.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ UK troops to take on NATO duties in Poland and Estonia . In: BBC News . July 8, 2016 ( bbc.com [accessed January 24, 2017]).
2. ↑ Hundreds of German soldiers in Lithuania from 2017 , Rheinische Post, October 26, 2016.
3. ↑ Ben Farmer, Roland Oliphant, James Badcock: Britain to send hundreds more troops to Russia border as Cold War tension escalates across Europe , The Telegraph, October 27, 2016.
4. ^ Estonia - French deployment in the context of the enhanced forward presence (eFP). (No longer available online.) The French Delegation to NATO, July 28, 2017, archived from the original on August 5, 2017 ; accessed on September 9, 2017 (English). Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.