Gordon Carrera

I've also been talking to someone else who's quite a senior figure here in Estonia and who's been very vocal at the conference.

His name is Tomas Ilves.

He was a foreign minister for Estonia and then its president for 10 years from 2006 to 2016.

He's a real close observer of the relationships, the international relationships.

He was educated himself and grew up

in the United States before coming back to Estonia.

So I wanted to hear what he thought about the security threats and the relationships.

Estonia on the front lines with Russia.

The message from Estonia for so long has been that the rest of Europe needs to wake up to the Russian threat.

Do you feel, I mean, sitting here at this conference, talking to people, lots of people from other places in Europe, do you feel that message has got through or is it still a bit mixed?

I mean, the mood also is that maybe Russia has got quite bogged down in Ukraine.

It's not going so well on the battlefield.

slightly more positive, but there's also worry about what comes next after that, isn't there?

Even if that's the case.

I mean, we went down to see the exercise, the spring storm exercise.

Clearly, it's about preparing for the possibility of a Russian invasion into Estonia.

And I think people are trying to think how to talk about that because you don't want to sound like too alarmist or that it's inevitable, but equally people want to deter it by saying we are prepared for such a possibility.

There's a kind of fine balance, isn't there, in how to talk about the threat and how big it is.

Sent to Ukraine.

uh but no one says you know vence pills is next yeah it doesn't sound as good so much does depend on the mind of putin i mean how much did you ever meet him i mean did you ever i did yeah yeah but not not very you must have observed him over many years as a foreign minister i still do and it's the mystery of what goes on in his head and i think you know we're a