Estonian Defense Minister Hanno Pevkur stated on Tuesday in a live “Postimees” broadcast that the Russian shooting exercises held on Lake Peipus on July 9 are not a cause for concern, as they took place on Russian territory.
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“There is no need to worry too much because the border guard was monitoring the situation. Internal waters are under the control of our border guard. It is indeed unusual in that the Russians have never before conducted such shooting exercises on Lake Peipus. Of course, they did it on their own territory,” said the Estonian Defense Minister.
“This time their goal was to train to destroy water or sea drones. Perhaps the weather conditions did not allow them to do this in the Gulf of Finland, or for some other reason, it was done on Lake Peipus. Or such a task was assigned to units deployed beyond Piirissaar Island. It is still difficult to assess how successful they were, but it seems that there is some panic within the authorities.”
According to the minister, on the one hand, exercises on Lake Peipus should actually be conducted at sea. On the other hand, we see that the Russian fuel crisis has also reached the border guard – “border guard officers were ordered to clear the border with machetes, so quite strange things are happening in Russia.”
“Russia constantly conducts various exercises”
“As I said, internal water bodies fall under the competence of the police and border guard service. It is they who decided whether to report it or not. Russia itself constantly conducts various exercises on its side, just like we do. We do not see in the Russian media, at least we have not seen, that, for example, the ‘Siili’ or ‘Kevadtorm’ exercises (in Estonia – editor’s note) received much attention, although many shots were fired and large groups of people moved. On land, Russia has also conducted such shooting exercises before,” said the Estonian Defense Minister.
“In this case, people found out about it and reported it. The police and border guard service provided more detailed information about what happened. It is not always a matter of judgment to decide each time whether to make it public or not. Since it happened on the Russian side, there was, so to speak, no threat to Estonian territory,” said the minister.
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Earlier, Estonian Interior Minister Igor Taro said that any exercises near the border are provocative in nature.
“We have very strict rules on how to behave in the border zone, what to do and what not to do,” he said. “Usually, defense forces do not just approach the border to conduct some exercises out of nowhere. Looking at recent Russian behavior, it seems they provoke and constantly test various border-related things – both literally and figuratively,” said the Estonian Interior Minister.
What happened
15min reminds that Russia last week conducted combat shooting exercises on Lake Peipus for the first time in a long time and without prior notice, just a few kilometers from the Estonian border, reported the daily “Postimees”.
The incident, which could be heard on the Estonian side of Lake Peipus, is particularly unusual because the exercises took place on the lake itself, not at the land border.
The Estonian Police and Border Guard Board remained quite reserved in describing the incident. Deputy head of the South Prefecture Border Guard Office Tauno Tammikas said that although the Russian side did not inform Estonia about the combat shooting exercises, border guards monitor events at the borders daily and knew what was happening on the other side of the border.
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