Russia needs a stronger deterrence to stop its aggressive moves on mainland Europe and a UK reintroduction of conscription would go some way to foiling Moscow’s predatory ambitions, Estonia Prime Minister Kaja Kallas said Thursday.
Kallas made her call during an interview with the BBC in her prime ministerial office in Tallinn.
Estonia’s leader since 2021 sees conscription as another integral part of both providing a deterrence to Russia but also stronger defence if it does attack.
Kaja Kallas Prime Minister of Estonia sees UK conscription along with other NATO allies as something she can recommend “in many aspects.” (Photo by Nicolas Economou/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
“We have a reserve army of 44,000 people that would equal, for Great Britain, around two million people. Two million people who are ready to defend their country and know what they have to do,” she told her interviewer.
After she mentions Britain unprompted, she was asked whether she would in fact recommend conscription to the UK as others already have.
Which is it? Army Says Training Ukraine Troops a Dress Rehearsal for NATO Conscription, While Govt Rules Out Mandatory Service https://t.co/1kLtgZuFxu
— Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) January 25, 2024
“Of course, every country decides for themselves, we are all democracies, but I recommend this in many aspects.”
Kallas was reminded that the head of the British Army was rebuked by Downing Street after saying Britain should train a “citizen army” ready to fight a war on land in the future and quickly responded.
“Well it doesn’t surprise me because we have different historical backgrounds. We have lost our independence and freedom once and we don’t want to lose it again. They say that you only understand freedom and what it means when you don’t have it.”
File/Eighteen-year-old conscripts on parade at the Royal West Kent Depot in Maidstone, Kent, having been called up for National Service, November 1954. Joseph McKeown/Picture Post/Hulton Archive/Getty)
National service was the standard peacetime form of conscription in the UK, introduced after the Second World War.
It came into force in January 1949 and required all men aged 17 to 21 to serve in one of the armed forces for an 18-month period. It was discontinued in 1960, with the last servicemen discharged in 1963.
A UK Ministry of Defence spokesperson told the BBC there is “absolutely no suggestion of a return to conscription.”
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