New milestones established in defense cooperation between Estonia, Germany baltictimes.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from baltictimes.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
A hundred musicians, music teachers and students and members of the church held a support rally for the Defense Forces and Police and Border Guard orchestras and chaplains on Tuesday.
Former Estonian Defense Forces (EDF) commander and current MEP Riho Terras (Isamaa) said that in the current critical security situation, the state should increase the defense budget instead of making any cuts and that one of the options could be a loan. In my assessment, cuts in the defense sector should not be made in this moment. The international situation is so critical and intense. Cuts in defense send the wrong message and weaken Estonia s defense capabilities, Terras told ERR. And if it is urgent then I do not see these cuts, since the EDF has focused on producing actual capabilities over the last few years and has tried to reduce all costs to a minimum. There is no more to take, he added.
Responding to questions by MPs on Wednesday, Foreign Minister Eva-Maria Liimets (Center) said the government wants to move forward with the border agreement signed in 2014 and to ratify the agreement simultaneously in the Estonian and Russian parliaments.
Speaking to the Riigikogu on Wednesday, Liimets said the current government is ready to move forward with the border agreement between Estonia and Russia. The Estonian government has proposed to proceed with the agreement signed in 2014 and to ratify this agreement in parallel in the parliaments, Liimets said.
Liimets stressed that Estonia considers it important that the ratification of the border agreement be pursued in parallel in the parliaments. Therefore, according to the foreign minister, it cannot be said that Estonia is ready to proceed unilaterally with the border agreement.
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Photo: Naval vessels from Estonia and several other countries, involved in the two-week Operation Open Spirit 2021 mine-clearing endeavor. Author: Maria Tõkke, Jarkko Martin Pukki, Kaimar Tauri Tamm
An international mine-clearing operation in Estonian waters ended Thursday. Over 120 pieces of ordnance, the bulk of them dating from World War Two, were discovered and disposed of during that time. Various shipwrecks were also discovered during the exercise.
Of the 127 pieces of ordnance found during the exercise, dubbed Operation Open Spirit 2021, 93 were German World War Two-era sea mines, while seven unexploded torpedoes from the same war, and other ordnance, were located.