As Prince William visits Estonia, the UK is urged to spend more on defence

Estonia’s Deputy Defence Minister speaks to ITV News Royal Editor Chris Ship

Britain has been urged to go even further on defence spending by one of its Nato allies to counter the ever-growing threat from Russia.

Estonia’s defence minister was speaking ahead of a visit to the Baltic country by Prince William who will arrive here on Thursday.

Despite Prime Minister Keir Starmer cutting Britain’s overseas aid budget to increase UK defence spending to 2.5% of the size of our economy (GDP), Estonia – which has a 200-mile border with Russia – urged the British Prime Minister to go further.

“The reality is that we cannot change our neighbour, and our neighbour is very hostile towards its neighbours”, Defence Minister Hanno Pevkur told ITV News in the Estonian capital, Tallinn.

This week, Estonia announced it would increase military spending to five per cent of GDP by next year which, proportionately, is much greater than the UK government’s ambition of moving to a 3% spending target on defence by the end of the parliament.

“Every step is good”, Mr Pevkur said about the UK’s military spending announcement in recent weeks.

Asked if Britain and other NATO allies should do more, Estonia’s Defence Secretary replied: “We can’t make the decision on behalf of the British people … but we would like to see that everybody would do more.”

In Estonia, a country with just 1.3 million people that spent half a century under Soviet rule, the threat from Russia is viewed much more acutely than from western Europe.

Whatever the final shape of a ceasefire deal following the talks between Vladamir Putin and Donald Trump, Tallinn worries about what would happen to Russian forces if and when they withdraw from Ukraine.

Senior politicians are concerned that President Putin could redeploy them to Russia’s border with the Baltic countries: Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.

All three countries were once part of the USSR and are now members of both the EU and Nato.

“Then the threat here level would increase significantly and immediately,” said Mr Pevkur.

The Prince of Wales will spend two days in Estonia, meeting senior politicians and also travelling close to the Russian border to visit British troops who deployed here as part of Operation CABRIT, helping to strengthen the military defences on NATO’s eastern flank.

Estonia still has mandatory conscription for all male teenagers and also has a growing home guard, called the Estonian Defence League (EDL).

We spent some time with a volunteer paramedic for the EDL, one of the organisation’s 30,000 members.

In her day job, Liina Viru is a writer in an opera house but when we met her in her military fatigues she was training in a field ambulance at a defence base on the outskirts of Tallinn.

Why did she join up? The Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 took place on Estonia’s Independence Day: February 24.

For Liina, that day was “an immense shock”.

It was also a wake-up call.

“We wanted to do something,” she told us, “you can’t despair forever”.

“As an Estonian, we have it in our DNA. We know what it feels like to be occupied by Russia. So, the feeling was very real. The anguish was very real.”

Along with 4,200 other civilians, Liina and her friends signed up to serve with the Estonia Defence League straight after the Ukraine invasion.

EDL members can legally keep guns and ammunition in their homes and are in a state of “readiness” in case of a Russian attack.

Against this backdrop, Prince William will fly into Tallinn this week and can expect a warm welcome.

Britain is a close ally and in the Estonian War of Independence, when this country defeated an attempted occupation by Soviet forces between 1918 and 1920, they remembered with appreciation the help that British warships gave them.

It led to a period of 20 years as an independent state until Estonia was forcibly incorporated into the USSR in 1940.

It did not regain its freedom until 1991.

As heir to the throne, Prince William will steer clear of politics and will be unlikely to say anything in public about the rapidly changing world order, which has emerged since President Trump’s return to the White House.

But the presence of a senior royal here will say everything that needs to be said – just as it did when King Charles embraced Vlodoymyr Zelenskyy at Sandringham – just a few hours after the Ukrainian President’s public bust-up with Trump in the Oval Office.

William will also meet the President of Estonia and, as Colonel-in-Chief of the Mercian Regiment, the prince will take part in the official handover as the Mercians take on the tour of duty here from The Royal Dragoon Guards.

Royal visits like these take place at the request of the UK government which is determined to show its support, militarily and diplomatically, for the Baltic countries.

As for the latest offer from the Russian president to stop attacking Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, Estonia’s defence minister called it a “cynical approach”.

Mr Pevkur said his “hostile” neighbour: “Putin is ready to give one finger and asking for half of your body” in return.