US president Donald Trump has said the United States “would” defend Poland and the Baltic states if Russia continues to escalate – remarks that come as former Estonian president Toomas Hendrik Ilves warned the West would not take Moscow’s threat seriously until a “mass casualty event” unfolds on NATO soil.
Answering a question from the Italian news agency Ansa on whether the US would come to the aid of its NATO allies on the border with Russia, the US president replied, “Yeah, I would. I would.” The statement, delivered before he attended the memorial service of conservative influencer Charlie Kirk in Arizona on Sunday, came at a moment of heightened alarm on NATO’s north-eastern flank.
On Friday, three Russian MiG-31 fighter jets violated Estonian airspace for nearly 12 minutes – the most serious incursion in years – prompting Tallinn to summon Moscow’s chargé d’affaires, trigger NATO Article 4 consultations, and press for an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council. Just days earlier, 19 drones crossed into Polish skies, while incursions have also been reported in Romania and Latvia.
Lithuania, Estonia and the Czech Republic have urged a more forceful response. Petr Pavel, the Czech president, declared, “We must respond appropriately, including possibly shooting down Russian aircraft… If we don’t stick together, sooner or later it will happen to us too.” Lithuania’s defence minister, Dovile Šakaliene, wrote that “Eastern Sentry is long due” and pointed to Turkey’s decision a decade ago to down a Russian jet.
Poland’s foreign minister, Radosław Sikorski, called for “very firm and unequivocal” action, while Estonia’s prime minister, Kristen Michal, warned there are “clear parameters for shooting down Russian fighter jets violating Estonia’s border”.
Estonia “expecting a stronger response”
For former president Toomas Hendrik Ilves, who led Estonia from 2006 to 2016, the greater danger is complacency. Speaking to LBC – a London-based national radio station known for its political interviews and call-in debates – he said: “To be cynical about it, I think we need a mass casualty event before the member states are forced to actually take this seriously.”
“We can see that NATO is extremely reticent to undertake any kind of action… I think that it will take a genuine tragedy before NATO will get itself in order on these issues, precisely because of this incredible reticence to undertake anything.”
Ilves said his country is “expecting a stronger response” and that “nothing really was done” to stave off further Russian aggression. “Certainly you can force (Russian fighter jets) to land, escort them to an air base and then investigate further. I mean, these are gradations of what to do, but at this point, nothing really was done,” he said.
He also aimed his criticism across the Atlantic, accusing Trump of bluster without delivery. “We see rather robust rhetoric and no action, none on the part of Donald Trump, who periodically says ‘I will make a decision in two weeks’… But nothing ever happens. And in fact, what we’ve seen is that, that the deliveries of weapons to Ukraine have cut off.”
The comments underline a widening rift: on one side, frontline states demanding NATO take bolder action against Russian provocation; on the other, Western capitals wary of measures that might trigger direct confrontation.
Estonia, NATO’s smallest frontline state, now finds itself at the centre of that tension. As one senior official put it over the weekend: “The question is not whether Russia will try again – but how we will respond.”
