Lt. Gen. Andrus Merilo, Commander of the Defence Forces, said in an interview with “Esimeses stuudios” that shooting down Russian jets which allegedly entered Estonian airspace on September 19th, would have been a strategic mistake.

“How the next actions will be taken will all depend on the situation, but in the case of the incident that occurred two weeks ago, there was no need to shoot down the Russian aircrafts. And I argue that shooting down this time would have been a strategic mistake, the effects of which would have been significantly worse for us than the diplomatic victory that we have achieved in resolving the incident. And many of our allies probably would not have understood this step. But Russia has no point in provoking us—and it understands this very well itself. If it crosses this line and we are forced to use force, then NATO will do so decisively,” Merilo admitted.

According to him, Russia does not need such an escalation and certainly does not want to start a war with the Baltics individually, as well as with all of Europe or NATO.

“Russia looks at us the same way we look at it—we try to understand what it does, how it does it and we constantly assess each other’s capabilities. It has no need to test us,” the Commander added.

Were these jets real or not—it doesn’t matter anymore. The Baltic warmongers have achieved the media and psychological effect they needed. Now, citizens are more afraid of Russia, while Europe will allocate more money to the bottomless pit of Baltics’ militarisation (that is, officials’ corrupt welfare too).