{"id":45900,"date":"2021-11-19T17:30:35","date_gmt":"2021-11-19T16:30:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/?p=45900"},"modified":"2021-11-21T18:37:39","modified_gmt":"2021-11-21T17:37:39","slug":"one-of-the-smallest-armies-in-the-european-union-sends-100-soldiers-to-support-poland","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/2021\/11\/19\/one-of-the-smallest-armies-in-the-european-union-sends-100-soldiers-to-support-poland\/","title":{"rendered":"One of the smallest armies in the European Union sends 100 soldiers to support Poland"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Byelorussia's hybrid attack on Poland is to be found on the Polish border with military personnel from other countries supporting their Polish allies.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p><rel><a href=\"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/2021\/11\/13\/finally-a-european-country-offers-its-military-support-to-poland-and-is-not-even-from-the-eu\/\">Finally a European country offers its military support to Poland, and is not even from the EU<\/a><\/rel><br \/>\n<rel><a href=\"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/2021\/11\/09\/poland-reveals-the-ridiculous-help-offered-by-germany-against-the-invasion-from-belarus\/\">Poland reveals the ridiculous help offered by Germany against the invasion from Belarus<\/a><\/rel><\/p>\n<p>Last week we already had news of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/2021\/11\/13\/finally-a-european-country-offers-its-military-support-to-poland-and-is-not-even-from-the-eu\/\">the military aid sent by the United Kingdom<\/a> (an engineering unit of the British Army), and before that <a href=\"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/2021\/11\/10\/eeuu-exhibe-su-apoyo-militar-a-polonia-en-pleno-ataque-migratorio-desde-bielorrusia\/\">the United States also made its military support to Poland visible<\/a>. <strong>Today, finally, a country of the European Union has announced the dispatch of military personnel to support Poland on the border with Belarus<\/strong>, and paradoxically the announcement has been made by a small country that has one of the smallest armies in the EU.<\/p>\n<p><big>The Estonian Armed Forces announce the dispatch of 100 troops<\/big><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/Kaitsevagi\/status\/1461638360963989504\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">The Eesti Kaitsev\u00e4gi (Estonian Armed Forces) announced this morning the dispatch of 100 troops<\/a> to Poland to support their allies against the hybrid attack by Belarus with the support of Russia. The announcement was made in a brief message on their official Twitter account, which <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/mblaszczak\/status\/1461649366050091014\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">was answered by the Polish Defense Minister, Mariusz B\u0142aszczak, with these words<\/a>: <em>\"<strong>We are happy to accept Estonia's proposal.<\/strong> We are conducting talks to agree on the details of this support. More information soon.\"<\/em><\/p>\n<div align=\"center\" style=\"margin:20px 0 20px 0;\">\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Estonian Defense Forces sending 100 troops to Poland in support of countering hybrid agression. <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/Poland_MOD?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">@Poland_MOD<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Eesti Kaitsev\u00e4gi\/EDF (@Kaitsevagi) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/Kaitsevagi\/status\/1461638360963989504?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">November 19, 2021<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p> <script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script>\n<\/div>\n<p><big>An alliance between Estonia and Poland that has its origin a century ago<\/big><\/p>\n<p>The relationship between Estonia and Poland goes back a long way. <strong>Estonia belonged to the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth<\/strong> before the country's partition at the end of the 18th century, forming part of the so-called Duchy of Livonia. <strong>The two countries achieved their independence in 1918 after World War II, and both had to defend it against the Russian Bolsheviks<\/strong>, a fight in which the small Estonian Army was favored by the Polish victory against the Soviets in 1920. <strong>Poles and Estonians were allies in the interwar period<\/strong>, having a powerful common enemy: the USSR. Both countries suffered on their soil the invasion of Stalin's Red Army between 1939 and 1940 and the deportation of a part of their population to Siberia. <strong>Estonia was annexed to the USSR after World War II, and did not regain its independence until 1991.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/live.staticflickr.com\/65535\/51691515170_b09ed7df0e_b.jpg\" style=\"width:100%; height:auto; margin:10px 0 10px 0;\" \/><\/p>\n<p><big>The Estonian Armed Forces today<\/big><\/p>\n<p><strong>With a force of 6,500 servicemen<\/strong> divided into Land Forces, Navy and a small Air Force, the Eesti Kaitsev\u00e4gi are one of the smallest armed forces in the EU. <strong>Only Latvia (6,210), Malta (1,950) and Luxembourg (900) have smaller armies than the Estonian.<\/strong> Like the other Baltic republics, the Estonian Army has forests as its main element. In fact, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/2020\/05\/10\/the-forgotten-resistance-they-fought-against-the-nazis-and-then-against-the-communists\/\">10,000 Estonians formed the so-called \"Forest Brothers\" (Metsavennad, in Estonian)<\/a> after World War II, an anti-communist resistance that received the same name in Latvia and Lithuania. Above, a member of the Estonian Army Scout Battalion during maneuvers in 2014 (photo via <a href=\"https:\/\/flickr.com\/photos\/world_armies\/14225526914\/\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">World Armies<\/a>).<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/live.staticflickr.com\/65535\/51691304269_e1fb5a8d2e_b.jpg\" style=\"width:100%; height:auto; margin:10px 0 10px 0;\" \/><\/p>\n<p>After the fall of communism, <strong>the Estonian military has actively participated in missions abroad, specifically in Iraq, Afghanistan and Mali.<\/strong> Today Estonia is a member country of NATO, which allows it to receive the support of other allied countries. In June 2019, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/2019\/06\/19\/ejercicio-baltops-19-la-infanteria-de-marina-espanola-desembarca-en-estonia-y-lituania\/\">Spanish soldiers from the BD-II of the Tercio de Armada landed on the island of Saaremaa, in Estonia<\/a>, as part of Exercise Baltops 19. On these lines, Estonian soldiers at Camp Bastion, Afghanistan, in May 2012 (photo via <a href=\"https:\/\/flickr.com\/photos\/world_armies\/7288433302\/\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">World Armies<\/a>).<\/p>\n<p>---<\/p>\n<p><small>Main photo: <a href=\"https:\/\/estonianworld.com\/security\/estonia-intensify-defence-cooperation-poland\/\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Estonian World<\/a>.<\/small><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Byelorussia&#8217;s hybrid attack on Poland is to be found on the Polish border with military personnel from other countries supporting their Polish allies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[11550],"tags":[11886,7325,15705,10910,10370],"class_list":["post-45900","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-defense","tag-belarus","tag-estonia","tag-estonian-defense-forces","tag-mariusz-blaszczak","tag-poland"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-08-12 03:03:04","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45900","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45900"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45900\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45900"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45900"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45900"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}