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Leonid Bershidsky: Tiny Estonia awaits Putin’s next move with quiet defiance | National Post
Few European leaders take a harder line on Russian President Vladimir Putin’s aggression in Ukraine than his Estonian counterpart, Toomas Hendrik Ilves. His sympathy for Ukraine, however, is tempered by a belief that it didn’t do enough in advance to protect itself. His own country, he suggests, has been more responsible, which is why it will be more secure.
According to Ilves, as soon as Estonia broke free of the collapsing Soviet Union, its government made membership in the military alliance a foundation of its security strategy. The project was tough, but after 15 years, the goal was achieved. Ukraine, by contrast, never bothered to take that road while Russia’s military was still weak. “I had some Ukrainians here two weeks ago, and they said, ‘You are lucky. You got independent and you just joined NATO’,” Ilves says. “We had to work at it. Constant reforms, being constantly inspected, pulled apart, looked at every which way, as it was with the European Union. I was foreign minister for five years and I aged about 10 years during that period.”[/QUOTE]
Clearly Estonia took the long but difficult road to NATO membership.
While Ukraine went from 1 corrupt Govt to another.
Thoughts are?
Few European leaders take a harder line on Russian President Vladimir Putin’s aggression in Ukraine than his Estonian counterpart, Toomas Hendrik Ilves. His sympathy for Ukraine, however, is tempered by a belief that it didn’t do enough in advance to protect itself. His own country, he suggests, has been more responsible, which is why it will be more secure.
According to Ilves, as soon as Estonia broke free of the collapsing Soviet Union, its government made membership in the military alliance a foundation of its security strategy. The project was tough, but after 15 years, the goal was achieved. Ukraine, by contrast, never bothered to take that road while Russia’s military was still weak. “I had some Ukrainians here two weeks ago, and they said, ‘You are lucky. You got independent and you just joined NATO’,” Ilves says. “We had to work at it. Constant reforms, being constantly inspected, pulled apart, looked at every which way, as it was with the European Union. I was foreign minister for five years and I aged about 10 years during that period.”[/QUOTE]
Clearly Estonia took the long but difficult road to NATO membership.
While Ukraine went from 1 corrupt Govt to another.
Thoughts are?