Estonia calls for deployment of US troops, Patriot missiles    

WASHINGTON

Estonian President Kersti Kaljulaid called for U.S. Patriot missiles and troops to be deployed to her small Baltic state on April 4, telling AFP it was necessary to make deterrence “believable” for Russia.

In an interview coinciding with her visit to the White House, the conservative leader said the deployment of American materiel and personnel would bolster existing NATO troop deployments - launched in response to Russia’s more bellicose posture.

“We want to be sure that both NATO’s territory and NATO soldiers are well protected,” she said.

“We need to make sure that there is the air defense and the air support for these forces, in case that is necessary. We need our deterrence to be believable.”

Kaljulaid said the proposed deployments had not come up on April 3 in conversation with President Donald Trump - who is notoriously prickly about the use of US military assets abroad - but talks between the two governments were ongoing.

“We are past the stage in our relations that you come to Washington with an empty goody bag and then you go back with a bag filled with stuff,” she said.

“There is a permanent debate and discussion between the governments of the two countries,” she added, listing Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis and Vice President Mike Pence as key interlocutors.

Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea and its support for separatists in eastern Ukraine has rekindled long-standing fears about aggression in the already nervous Baltic states.

With a combined population of just six million people, the three countries were occupied and annexed by Moscow during World War II.

The trio broke free from the crumbling Soviet Union in 1991 and joined both the European Union and NATO in 2004.

NATO has sent a battle group to Estonia - namely troops from the U.K., France and Denmark - but Kaljulaid said that the deployment of American soldiers would bring another dimension.