Citizens in Defence: The Baltic States’ Volunteer Defence Organisations

Europe's armed forces need more personnel to meet today's military challenges. Volunteer defence organisations, such as those operating in the three Baltic states, can be part of the solution. They can also help better attune society to the requirements of comprehensive defence.

Europe’s rearmament, sparked by Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine and hastened by America’s reducing commitment to the security of the continent, will certainly mean new and more weapons systems to meet shortfalls in critical areas such as air defence, intelligence, and long-range strike. But effective military capability contains other ingredients, too.

A key lesson from Russia’s war is the enduring need for large numbers of personnel, both to fill traditional military roles and to operate the vast numbers of uncrewed air and ground vehicles that have emerged as a defining feature of contemporary warfare. Estimates vary widely, but the personnel count of Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Forces may be as much as 9% of the total Armed Forces of Ukraine. Russia’s uncrewed systems units will reportedly include 165 000 personnel by the end of this year.

A key lesson from Russia’s war is the enduring need for large numbers of personnel.

NATO’s European Allies have around 1.9 mn men and women in active military service but in the past years, most have still looked for ways to boost the size of their wartime force structures. Some have reintroduced compulsory military service or sought ways to make voluntary, short-duration service for young people more attractive. Others plan to increase the size of their active armed forces or their reserve components, which are usually made up of former conscripts and contract soldiers. The introduction of programmes to train civilians in military skills, both to deepen the pool of potential wartime recruits and to contribute to resilience-building in the population, has been another route.

Yet another option for some states has been to place greater reliance on volunteer defence organisations. These organisations, mostly staffed by civilians who are expected to undertake a certain level of military training each year and to take up military roles during crisis and war, are found, for example, in Denmark, the Netherlands, Poland, Sweden, and the UK. All three Baltic states also have such structures: the Estonian Defence League (Eesti Kaitseliit, EDL); the Latvian National Guard (Latvijas Republikas Zemessardze, LNG); and the Lithuanian Riflemen’s Union (Lietuvos šaulių sąjunga, LRU).

Roots

The EDL was established in 1918 and the LRU in 1919, during Estonia and Lithuania’s wars of independence. Both contributed to the fostering of a sense of national identity and pride and reflected the determination of the Baltic populations to secure and safeguard statehood. Between the two world wars, their promotion of societal involvement in defence, and of cultural and sports activities would later be foundational to the Baltic guerrilla movements operating against the Soviet regime between 1944 and the mid-1950s—the ‘Forest Brothers’.

The two organisations were disbanded in 1940 during the first Soviet occupation but were re-established towards the end of the Cold War, the LRU in 1989 and the EDL in 1990. Their nurturing of national cohesion and resistance was an important contribution to the restoration of Estonia’s and Lithuania’s independence. In Lithuania, the first of the Baltic states to declare re-independence from the Soviet Union, two LRU riflemen were amongst those killed in violent confrontations between the Soviet armed forces and the local population in January 1991.

Mobilising society for military defence, armed resistance, and civil disobedience has been a core feature of the volunteer defence organisations since their earliest days.

The LNG was established in 1991, though it, too, can trace its roots to a volunteer paramilitary organisation (Aizsargi) formed during Latvia’s war of independence. The LNG supported Latvia’s growing resistance movement and protected the country against military threats—despite the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russian troops would remain on Baltic territories until 1994, while the three states began their renewed independence with no armed forces at all. Mobilising society for military defence, armed resistance to occupation, and civil disobedience has thus been a core feature of the Baltic volunteer defence organisations since their earliest days.

Roles

Today, the EDL, LNG, and LRU have three broad roles. The first, and most important, is territorial defence, which requires them to recruit volunteers from and be responsible for the defence of local territories. In Estonia and Lithuania, these territories correspond, more or less, to counties—fifteen in Estonia and ten in Lithuania—and in Latvia to the five planning regions. The local focus of these arrangements is intended to simplify recruitment and training, and to ensure rapid response to security threats. In wartime, volunteer units would be subordinated to the command-and-control structures of the regular armed forces and through them to NATO.

While most volunteers serve as infantry personnel, many have specialist roles such as artillery, air defence, medical, logistics, host nation support, uncrewed aerial vehicle operations, search and rescue, and cyber defence. Unlike the regular armed forces, there is no expectation that volunteer units would serve abroad to defend other NATO Allies, although individual volunteer personnel occasionally serve in international crisis response operations.

The second role of the Baltic volunteer defence organisations is to participate in domestic crisis response. Definitions vary between the three states, but in general, the EDL, LNG, and LRU are required to take part in responses to ‘sub-threshold’ security threats and natural occurrences such as floods and forest fires, and to provide other forms of military assistance to the civil authorities. The EDL, for example, supported the Estonian police in securing energy infrastructure during the Baltic states’ 2025 desynchronisation from the BRELL electricity grid, while the LRU screened passengers at border points and enforced lockdown rules during the Covid-19 pandemic.

The LNG has a notably broad range of domestic security tasks, including some aspects of law enforcement. For example, LNG personnel helped organise the vaccination process during the Covid-19 pandemic, have operated alongside the border guard to prevent migrants crossing from Belarus, and have even assisted the police in dealing with organised crime.

The EDL, LNG, and LRU’s third role is more abstract and concerns their efforts to involve civil society in military and comprehensive defence, to foster the will to defend, and to prepare for the guerrilla warfare and other forms of resistance expected to emerge in the three states in the event of an occupation. In part, this is achieved through the promotion of personal qualities such as patriotism, honour, collective responsibility, duty, respect for national culture, and the pursuit of healthy lifestyles.

In Estonia, this role is also undertaken by three EDL affiliate organisations: the Women’s Voluntary Defence Organisation(Naiskodukaitse), the Young Eagles(Noored Kotkad), and the Home Daughters(Kodutütred). In Lithuania, the LRU delivers a mandatory civic and defence skills course to 9th-grade schoolchildren and runs a 5 000-strong contingent of young riflemen (below the age of 18). It has also conducted campaigns to enhance resilience to hybrid threats, including ones aimed at Lithuanian expatriate communities that may become victims of malign disinformation efforts.

Russia

Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea and intervention in the Donbas in 2014, and its full-scale invasion in Ukraine in 2022 have had two main impacts. First, the willingness of the Baltic populations to become involved in defence has grown, meaning more volunteers for the EDL, LNG, and LRU. Second, the central defence establishments of the three states have begun more serious consideration of how these organisations could be better incorporated into the robust defence arrangements required to meet the Russian military threat.

The EDL presently has an all-time high of 18 000 members, with a further 7 000 in its three affiliate organisations. The LNG has swelled to 10 000 members, while the LRU grew from 5 200 in 2020 to almost 9 000 by the end of 2023. The Baltic states expect these numbers to rise further: Estonia’s national defence plan requires the EDL to expand to a sustainable 30 000, the LNG will need to reach perhaps 12 000 if Latvia’s target for its peacetime armed forces strength is to be realised, while the LRU envisions not less than 50 000 citizens among its ranks by 2035. Alongside this expansion, all three organisations have seen their wartime roles and integration with the regular force structures clarified and more frequently exercised.

All three organisations have their wartime roles integrated with the regular force structures.

Their tasks have also been adjusted to ensure a better fit with today’s needs. The LNG has seen a broad rebalancing of its role, placing greater emphasis on warfighting at the expense of domestic responsibilities. The LNG, and the LRU, have also been used to test concepts emerging from defence innovation, helping to bridge the gap between technology development and military operational requirements. This diversification into technology has included the cyber domain (the EDL, LNG, and LRU all have specialist cyber defence units), electronic warfare and, more recently, uncrewed aerial systems.

Ruptures

These developments, and the associated increased funding and attention given to the Baltic volunteer defence organisations, are welcome: not least because for much of the post-Cold War period, they suffered from limited resources and the allocation of outdated weapons and equipment. In addition, the regular armed forces often exhibited sceptical attitudes towards their volunteer counterparts. These were, at least in the early post-Cold War period, partly justified, as the volunteer organisations sometimes struggled with disciplinary problems and difficulties in establishing western military cultural and training standards in units whose members had only experienced Soviet military practice.

Still today, the three organisations experience some unevenness in the commitment of their members to meeting training requirements, while problems that result from shortages of instructors and training infrastructure (such as rifle ranges) have been compounded by their rapid expansion. These issues are perhaps inevitable in organisations primarily staffed by volunteers, but motivation is generally good, especially as equipment shortfalls are addressed and roles clarified.

Allies and partners might consider whether they could benefit from establishing similar organisations.

More generally, the deep historical roots of the volunteer organisations and their contribution to re-establishing Baltic independence have sometimes led them to maintain a rather detached position from the regular defence—and, indeed, state—structures. In one notorious case, following parliamentary elections in 1992, a unit of Lithuania’s National Defence Voluntary Service (Savanoriška krašto apsaugos tarnyba), a parallel organisation to the LRU, set up a camp in the forest and declared armed resistance to any political authorities judged to have been collaborators with the Soviet occupation regime. The situation was quickly resolved, but the Service, seen as being too close to right-wing political forces, was neutered and brought under the full control of the military command.

Today, such an event is barely conceivable as the EDL, LNG, and LRU are far more closely integrated into defence structures and focused on dealing with a common external threat. These organisations provide a reasonably inexpensive source of trained manpower for national defence. Their familiarity with local conditions and deep connections with other local agencies make them very able to mount a first response to any contingency. And they provide a strong connection between the military and civil society around which the three states’ comprehensive or total defence policies can be built. Allies and partners might consider whether they, too, could benefit from establishing similar organisations.

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This article was written for the Lennart Meri Conference special issue of ICDS Diplomaatia magazine. Views expressed in ICDS publications are those of the author(s).