Tomas Ilves

I mean, here, having adopted from day one the Finnish model of a conscription army, we can get within a day 75,000 troops, all of whom are, I mean, they're reservists and they have all trained and they continue to train because they have regular reserve exercises.

And that is, as I said, that's what the Finns have been practicing for 75 years.

So there is an awareness among people here that we have to be prepared.

We also have Home Guard, which has seen an explosion in membership.

Again, to be prepared.

But the outside narratives of Narva's next, partially based on... The town on the border.

Right, and partially based on the appeal of alliteration, and then the stunning visual picture of two fortresses

Now, countering that argument, of course, I mean, Narva is next.

There is absolutely no irredentism or secessionism on the Russian side.

So it's about defending Russians.

You know, the salaries across the river are like $250 or euros a month.

They're 1,500 on the Estonian side.

If you're anyone who is a permanent resident of this country, being a member of the EU, can live and work anywhere in Europe except for the UK.

And of course, why would any person want to be...

part of a Russia where your father, brother, husband, or son can be taken off and probably would be taken off.

Right.

But it looks nice on the map and that's why we end up getting a lot of this because there are a lot of other border towns.

hear from the intelligence agencies it's quite hard to get inside his head and what he's trying to do but it is something that you can sense people are constantly trying to work out what is going on in that one man's head well i mean his um his sort of strange historical essay published in 2021 um is uh i think is a pretty good indicator of kind of this uh

His idea of, I mean, it's a really sort of ethnically based, revanchist, pan-Slavic idea.

Greater Russia.