Fewer than 100. That is how many American service members were left in Estonia in early July, against the 500 to 700 who normally rotate through. Estonian public broadcaster ETV reported that those still there are mostly support staff, and Defence Minister Hanno Pevkur confirmed the picture.
There was no dramatic order from Washington. The departing units were meant to hand over to fresh ones, but the handover stalled while the Pentagon reviews how many troops it keeps in Europe. A verdict on new deployments is due within six months. Officials in Tallinn stress that the pact behind the American presence, in force since 2022, has not changed.
A summer rotation, then a blank
Pevkur said the NATO commander for Europe and the head of U.S. Army Europe had told him another unit should land this summer and stay through December. How big it will be is unknown. After December, nobody can say. “That will become clear from the Pentagon’s six-month review,” he told ERR on Sunday. “But the next rotation should still move to Estonia during the summer.”
The next deployment also hangs on a new rotation to Poland, whose timing is unclear as well. “Exactly when it reaches Poland is certainly not a matter of one year,” Pevkur said, adding that it remains to be seen if Estonia’s rotating units will be drawn from that brigade or from another one. Defence Talks noted that earlier rotations usually came out of brigades based in Poland and Romania, and that an entirely new brigade could take years to bring in.
Waiting on the White House
In Tallinn the mood is closer to patience than panic. Kalev Stoicescu, who chairs parliament’s National Defence Committee, called it a “waiting period” for the Baltic states. Defence spending, he suggested, does not decide the question. “We can sing, dance and even hop on one leg. But in the end, the decision is made by the White House and the U.S. administration based on America’s own interests and vision,” he said. If American forces stay anywhere in Europe, he added, they belong on the eastern flank.
Pevkur does not expect word on the future of the troops at the NATO summit in Ankara. Estonia must lean on its own forces and on the NATO battlegroups that keep passing through the Baltic states. One of them, led by Britain with French contingents, has been in Estonia since 2017.
Not only Estonia
The Estonian drawdown sits inside a bigger reshuffle. Defence Talks reported that Lithuania watched more than 1,000 U.S. soldiers and their gear depart as a routine rotation ended, and that the Pentagon is weighing a pullback of about 5,000 personnel from Germany across the next half-year to year. The review is also testing whether more American resources should move toward the Indo-Pacific. Officials insist none of this amounts to leaving NATO.
Estonia shares a 294-kilometer border with Russia.
Sources
- US troops have left Estonia for an unknown period of time (ERR News)
- The U.S. Has Withdrawn Almost All Its Troops From Estonia (SFG Media)
- US Troops Leave Estonia as Pentagon Reviews Future NATO Military Presence in Europe (Defence Talks)
