The minister was in Washington this week, and met with U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin.

A heightened U.S. presence in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania is also needed, not least thanks to the deterrent effect it would have on Russia, Pevkur went on in an interview given to ERR which follows.

What was the purpose of your meeting with U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin? What was on the table, and what was the outcome of your meeting, from an Estonian perspective?

The most important thing for us is certainly bilateral cooperation. That we can talk about how to increase the U.S. footprint in Estonia. How we might cooperate with the U.S. in, for example, long-range ammunition. This is critical, and it was also critical in the negotiations for the new coalition, where we were forced, for instance, to hike taxes, in order to buy more ammunition. Really the American contribution is quite high. HIMARS are coming, but HIMARS also require ammunition. And that was certainly one of the most important themes.

The other aspect was that NATO's overall defense spending had to rise. This is because the capability needs we reviewed here in Washington a few weeks ago need additional funding.

And third, the smaller things, for instance U.S. involvement in helping Ukraine, and in the IT coalition as a whole. This – how we further boost assistance to Ukraine. In summary, there were quite a lot of topics that we encountered. It was certainly a very necessary meeting.

There was just a NATO summit here in Washington when many of the same issues were on the table that time. What was new about today's meeting?

What was certainly new was that we were discussing bilateral relations between the two countries. Naturally, one question is what NATO as a whole has to do. But that was a very small aspect of our meeting. The main focus was certainly on our bilateral relationship: What the U.S. presence in Estonia is, how their forces integrate into the Estonian defense plan and therefore into the NATO defense plan. Plus how we can boost the volume of ammunition, and also various types of equipment in Estonia.

These are things you can't talk about in a NATO meeting, and that's what bilateral meetings are for. The last time there was a bilateral meeting was about a year-and-a-half ago. And related to this, I wasn't able to be present for the appointment of the new government. Meetings like this simply do not get postponed.

And how can we boost the U.S. presence in Estonia then?

One thing is that a lot of Americans have stockpiles of their own.

Defense Secretary Austin also acknowledged that much has been given away to Ukraine. This is all understandable. The first and most important thing is that the industry can further raise its production, since if it cannot, then we, for example, will not be able to purchase ammunition with the new funding to come from the Estonian taxpayer.

And connected with this I think that the next meetings will have to be with Lockheed Martin and the industry side, so that we can give them the signal that we are ready to buy.

But in order to do so, the sector has to get up to speed. We will not be satisfied if, for example, we get the missiles only in 2027-2029.

You held a meeting with Congress. Who did you meet with and what was discussed?

Yes. Mike Rogers is a very important member of Congress in that sense, and who as chairman of the committee is very much responsible for defense spending and defense budgets. We had a meeting with him and we talked about the Baltic security initiative, which gave a very strong assurance that regardless of whether you have Democrats or Republicans in Congress, they strongly support the Baltic states. They would like to see the Baltic states be even bolder, and request for themselves more of an American presence.

Plus at the very least his message was, since he is a Republican himself, that he is trying to impress upon Donald Trump that the U.S. presence in the Baltic states needs to increase, and deterrence towards Russia needs to be strengthened.

To finish off with, we cannot overlook what is happening at home. Does the new coalition agreement include this €1.6 billion for the purchase of ammunition?

The coalition agreement includes an additional national defense package, and of course these exact sums will still have to be negotiated in the budget. Also, for example, exactly how much the tax take is to be.

The defense tax now being introduced will bring some relief to us, such that the shortfalls we have had in defense funding will get covered and we will also receive additional money.

In all likelihood it will not come quite to €1.6 billion, but you also have to take into account that in fact this year we already made the decision to add almost half a billion in ammunition.

So, let's say I estimate the order of magnitude of the total contribution from the previous coalition plus this coalition, we will be buying somewhere between €2.2 and €2.3 billion in new ammunition over the next four years. But if you are asking if more is wanted, of course one would have wanted more, but there is nothing to be done, you also have to look at the capacity of the taxpayer.

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