What Ukraine Achieved in Vilnius
Since the NATO Summit in Vilnius failed to grant Ukraine an invitation to the Alliance, undisguised disappointment has been common.
Read moreSince the NATO Summit in Vilnius failed to grant Ukraine an invitation to the Alliance, undisguised disappointment has been common.
Read moreNATO’s heads of state and government meet this week for their second summit after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Russia’s war and its consequences will again dominate the agenda.
Read moreWhile Baltic security thinking has long been dominated by assessments of the risk of Russian military aggression in Europe, the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 was still a shock in its brutality and scale. It has led the three Baltic states to further increase defence spending and to accelerate the building of national defence capabilities.
Read moreDefence spending has often been the cause of bitter arguments among NATO Allies. In today’s worsened security environment, Allies will doubtless need to return to this thorny topic at their July summit in Vilnius.
Read moreNATO routinely measures and compares the national defence inputs and outputs of its members to assess how they share the burden of collective defence. It has always been apparent that by comparison with the US, Europe needs to do more, but NATO’s burden-sharing discussion is stuck on tired arguments about simple spending measures.
Read moreOn 30 September, the Estonian Government submitted its draft 2021 state budget to the Estonian Parliament (Riigikogu). For once, the allocation for national defence was the result of a heated political row between coalition partners.
Read moreAllies recently agreed to a new cost sharing formula whereby European members and Canada will increase their contributions to NATO’s three common funded budgets allowing the US share to decrease. This new arrangement is a consequence of the reluctance of many European nations to spend more on defence and the perceived need to send positive signals to the White House.
Read moreOn 25 September 2019, the Government of Estonia agreed to the 2020 draft state budget, which obviously includes the defence budget.
Read moreOn 11-12 July 2018, the heads of state and government of the North Atlantic Alliance met in Brussels.
Read moreJonatan Vesviov is the Estonian Ambassador to the US. Before this he worked in the Estonian Ministry of Defence for 10 years.
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