In the two years which have followed, the state has conducted studies, negotiated with landowners, and begun constructing initial access roads, while the government has made amendments to the training area boundaries.

These changes were on the table at a public discussion of proposals held Monday in the town of Võru.

As a result of the boundary adjustments, 13 additional privately owned properties, five of which have been developed, have been added to the 215 land parcels. The expansion affects land and homeowners, both those who approached the state with a proposal to include their land within the training area boundaries – the state is compensating these land acquisitions – or received a proposal from the state.

For instance, Peeter Kivioja, from the village of Nilbõ, was approached by the state to relinquish his home, since 60 hectares of his land were already slated for development.

Meanwhile, several transactions involving homes have already been finalized, though the State Defense Investment Center (RKIK), overseeing the sales, will not give an exact figure. RKIK training area portfolio manager Elari Kalmaru told "Aktuaalne kaamera": "We have already acquired some houses."

"Our plan is to preserve these houses, so to speak. We don't want to demolish them; we can certainly use them for training purposes," Kalmaru went on.

Another local resident with property in the affected zone, Tarvi Tuusis, said the state has been contacting him once a quarter over the past couple of years. No agreement has been reached so far, and no new location is in sight, he said. Tuusis told "Aktuaalne kaamera" that being able to continue farming is important to him.

He said: "The process doesn't look too rosy, though as of today I've calmed down, up to a point."

"The initial emotions were really intense, when we found out at the end of October [2022] that farmsteads would be taken away," he went on. Tuusis ended with a realistic appraisal of the situation.

"This is likely inevitable, and we console ourselves by remembering that similar issues exist elsewhere in Estonia too, for instance with the Rail Baltica project," he went on.

The town hall meeting was not only somber but fairly boisterous, as attendees derided the process and the officials on site giving the presentations, even singing and bearing placards.

A military training area had existed at Nursipalu during the Soviet era, and this was recommissioned in the 2000s. The changed security situation following Russia's invasion of Ukraine was followed by plans to triple the size of the training zone beyond its current approximately 3,000 hectares, in order to accommodate state-of-the-art allied equipment and to bring the facility up to the same level as its northern counterpart, the central training area in Harju County.

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