The army agreed with him, asking for EUR1.6 billion ($2.32 billion) for enough long-range rockets to mount a serious resistance.
In his eighth-floor office in Tallinn, Kusti Salm points to a map of power plants, airports and railroads across Finland, the Baltics and Poland. All of these would be “day one” targets for a barrage of missiles and drones if Russia invaded, he said. “Not a single country other than Ukraine could withstand this shower of air assaults. Not even for one day.”
Until last summer, Salm was the top-ranked civil servant in Estonia’s Ministry of Defense. A hawkish supporter of military aid to Ukraine, he was adamant that his own country — and the rest of Europe — was chronically underprepared for a Russian assault.
