Finland – EUobserver

Kaupo Rosin, director general of the Estonian foreign intelligence service: 'Most [Russian] soldiers have a low IQ level; they are convicts from the lowest strata of society. This is not an army you could use for sophisticated operations. Instead, they keep sending in troops blindly, sending them to their deaths'

[Interview] Estonia’s spy chief: Russia cannot replenish fallen soldiers – they have a serious battlefield problem

26 April 2026 by Ondřej Kundra

Estonia’s foreign intelligence service chief Kaupo Rosin reflects on a whole-of-society approach to defence, one unexpected threat to Europe, and what he realised at 16.

Edward Lucas. Edward Lucas is a writer and security expert.
His expertise includes energy, cyber-security, espionage, information warfare and Russian foreign and defence policy.
He is the founder and director of the Baltic International Security Centre, a new thinktank.
Formerly a senior editor at The Economist, the world’s foremost newsweekly, he was for many years a senior (non-resident) adviser at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA), a thinktank based in Washington, DC. He writes a regular column in the London Times, and also for Foreign Policy.
In 1992, he co-founded an English-language weekly in Tallinn, Estonia: the Baltic Independent. For many years a foreign correspondent, he was based in Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Moscow and the Baltic states.
In 2008 he wrote the The New Cold War, a prescient account of Vladimir Putin’s Russia, followed in 2011 by Deception, an investigative account of east-west espionage. He has written three other books,
An experienced broadcaster, he is a regular contributor to the BBC’s Today and Newsnight programmes, and to NPR, CNN and Sky News. Edward has lectured at Harvard, Oxford, Cambridge and other leading universities.
Lucas is the recipient of numerous awards and decorations. He was also the first foreigner to receive an Estonian electronic identity card, and received the first Lithuanian visa in 1991. He was deported from the Soviet Union, arrested, beaten up, interrogated and spied on by communist secret police agents behind the Iron Curtain. He studied economics at the London School of Economics and speaks five languages — German, Russian, Polish, Czech and Lithuanian.

Russia is trying to unsettle the Baltic states — oddly, the Ukrainians are helping

31 March 2026 by Edward Lucas

The real problem for the Baltics is not an unlikely Russian military attack in the future, but the divide-and-rule information operation going on right now, warns former editor at The Economist Edward Lucas.

The shocking return of anti-personnel mines to Europe

25 February 2026 by Julia Głębocka

At the start of last year, all 27 EU member states were signed up to the Ottawa Convention, banning the use, production, stockpiling and transfer of anti-personnel mines. Now Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Finalnd have withdrawn — with silence from Brussels.