A three-hour drive from Tallinn, the capital of Estonia, Camp Reedo appears only at the last bend of a dirt road dug between the pines. We are less than 30 kilometres as the crow flies from Russia. This military base is the first to be built on land in Estonia since the end of the Soviet era in 1991. It is to house American soldiers from 2025. In the middle of a newly deforested and paved land, dozens of hangars were fitted out at top speed: only fourteen months separate the decision to begin work in the summer of 2023 and the inauguration, which took place on 17 September, in the shadow of the flags of Estonia, the European Union and NATO.
Although Estonia’s main military positions have so far been in the north of the country, near the Baltic Sea, Reedo points out the Estonians’ desire to reinforce their military presence on their southern flank, which they say is the most exposed to Russian expansionism. “We are doing all this for one reason: to ensure the security of Estonia and its allies”“The Estonian Minister of Defence, Hanno Pevkur, said on the day of the opening, sitting behind his desk on the shiny asphalt parade ground.
The camp is part of NATO’s new military plans, adopted in July 2023. Its aim is to prevent the slightest incursion by the Russians on “NATO soil” in order to avoid a policy of fait accompli, as in the Ukrainian case. “The strategy is clear: don’t let them come back.Pevkur stresses. Our presence here and that of our allies sends a very clear deterrent message to Russia: we are in this together. Attacking one country means attacking them all, and the response will come from all of them.”, duck.
Strengthened American presence
As autumn approaches, the speed of the construction work seems to have taken the inhabitants of the surrounding dachas by surprise. Their houses, once located on the edge of a peaceful lake, now border paved roads along which columns of military vehicles will soon travel. Ultimately, the Reedo stronghold should even become part of a vast, already existing training camp called “Nursipalu”, whose surface area should be tripled in the coming months to 10,000 hectares, the equivalent of the Mourmelon camp (Marne) used by the French army.
Until then, the 500 or so US soldiers brought in to invest in the new facilities were housed in blue containers lined up a few kilometres away at the Taara base, a former Soviet-era complex. These soldiers began arriving in Estonia in late 2023, following the signing of a bilateral cooperation agreement between Tallinn and Washington. Since then, their presence has continued to grow and the walls of Taara have become too narrow.
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