In the near future additional troops from NATO countries will be placed in the Baltic countries. At that the military, residing in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, have been repeatedly caught in a sticky situations. Therefore, the republic’s authorities have decided to protect themselves in advance and accused Russia of possible provocations.
Honeytraps, staged pub brawls — designed to make British troops look like thugs — and subversive efforts to penetrate social media accounts to find information for blackmail purposes are expected to be attempted by “the opposite team”, Mikk Marran the head of the Estonian Information Board (EIB), the country’s equivalent of MI6, told The Times in a rare interview.
“There will be 800 young British soldiers. People will be traveling from their bases to the cities. Probably they [will] do some pub hopping. We cannot exclude some fights that might be triggered by the opposite team, as we call it in Estonia. For example, traditional honeytraps and so forth,” Marran told.
According to the source close to the government circles of Estonia, Marran’s statement had been done in order to warn the British side about future incidents and partially absolve themselves of responsibility for them.
According to him, initially the NATO military was settled far from Tallinn, Tartu and other major population centers in order to avoid possible excesses and conflicts with the local population.
“They set up base in the small town of Tapa, home to slightly more than five and a half thousand people. Tapa residents, said that relations between the people of this town and the military of NATO can be described as “difficult, but calm.”
“They drink a lot, and then start looking for adventures. May break something in a bar or cafe or can just walk around the city with noise and shouting. Of course, not without trying to get acquainted with local girls”, said a local resident Olga.
Some women living in Tapa like the presence of strong young men in the neighborhood. “A lot of women there are very excited. After all, many of them are living alone because their husbands went to Europe to work. The natural human desire is not going anywhere. Someone, perhaps, expects to marry. In general, men are free to move around the city”, said another resident of Tapa, Svetlana.
Other citizens say that now mainly pensioners are living there, who are often afraid of the noises due to military exercises.