According to Estonian Defense Minister Hanno Pevkura, this will be possible after Finland joins NATO and merges the coast guard systems of the two countries.
After Finland joins NATO, Helsinki and Tallinn plan to combine coastal defense systems that will completely close access to the Baltic Sea for ships of the Russian Federation. This was expressed by the Estonian Minister of Defense, Hanno Pevkur, in an interview with the Finnish newspaper Iltalehti.
“We need to integrate our coastal defense. The range of Estonian and Finnish missiles exceeds the width of the Gulf of Finland. This means that we have combined our missile defense. [противоракетную оборону] and we will share all the information with each other.”
According to him, after Sweden and Finland join the North Atlantic Alliance, the Baltic Sea will actually become “NATO’s inland sea”, and the Estonian politician believes that it will significantly change the situation compared to today.
The maximum width of the Gulf of Finland is 130 km. As the Finnish edition clarified, in the autumn of 2021, Estonia decided to acquire Israeli Blue Spear missiles to combat naval targets. The missile has a range of 290 km. Thus, Estonians can direct their rocket fire to any point in the Gulf of Finland.
The Finnish Navy, in turn, was armed with a missile system to destroy MTO 85M naval targets with a range of more than 100 km. It is equipped with a search radar head and the Finns are able to control the water area up to the northern coast of Estonia.
As noted, the Finns and Estonians planned joint coastal defense in the 1930s, but at that time the project was never implemented.
As Pevkur noted, the headquarters of the new NATO division will be established in Estonia in the near future. It will consist of five brigades. Estonia allocated two brigades, one more – Great Britain. If necessary, the allies will send two more brigades to the area.
Recall that from August 18, Estonia closed the entry of Russians with a Schengen visa. The decision does not affect Russian diplomats and their families and international trade workers. And students from the Russian Federation who do not have time to complete their education will be allowed to extend their residence permit for one year.
We wrote earlier that the USA has approved the accession of Finland and Sweden to NATO. According to Joe Biden, when the invasion began, Putin believed it could weaken the resolve of the Alliance countries. However, thanks to Finland and Sweden, the number of NATO countries increased to 32.
Source: Riafan
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