Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III Hosted Bilateral in Honor of His Excellency Estonian Defense Minister Hanno PevkurDeputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks and Deputy[...]

SECRETARY OF DEFENSE LLOYD AUSTIN: Well, Mr. Pevkur. Welcome. Welcome back to the Pentagon and thanks for coming back to Washington so soon after our successful and historic NATO summit. That summit made important progress on our priorities for NATO and for Ukraine. In February 2023, you hosted me during my first visit to your country as Secretary of Defense so I'm glad to be able to return the hospitality.

And I'm glad to continue our important dialog on transatlantic security. You know tomorrow marks 29 months since Russia launched its full scale invasion of its peaceful neighbor, Ukraine. And Putin's war of choice continues to threaten our shared security. The United States and Estonia, along with our allies and partners continued to stand strong for a free and sovereign Ukraine.

And you've shown outstanding support for Ukraine, including your security assistance contributions and your leadership of the Capability Coalition on Cyber and Information Technology. Estonia has experienced the Kremlin's aggression firsthand, so you know how important it is to stand up to Putin's imperial ambitions. Estonia's modernization and investment in new military capabilities are critical for deterring attacks and building readiness, so I applaud Estonia's pledge to invest more than three percent, three percent of your GDP on your national defense.

And that just underscores Estonia's dedication to transatlantic security. At the same time, I want to personally thank you, Hanno, for your gracious support of allied forces in Estonia. The United States remains committed to maintaining our persistent rotational force presence in the Baltics. And our rotation of US forces through Estonia shows how serious we are about Estonia's defense.

I'm also pleased that our troops in Estonia enjoy such a rich multinational training environment. And our civil military interaction teams have been working together to strengthen our people to people ties. So Mr. Minister, thanks again for being here. I look forward to a great discussion today and to strengthening our defense relationship for many years to come. Over to you, sir.

MINISTER OF DEFENSE HANNO PEVKUR: Thank you, Mr. Secretary Lloyd. Thank you very much for hosting me here in Pentagon. So it is a great pleasure to be back in DC just a week after the celebrating of the 75 anniversary of NATO. So it is good to be back. And - and today it is a very important day as I mentioned to you that because Sumner Welles signed the declaration which said that the US will never recognize the United States - Soviet Union occupation of the Baltic states.

So it is a very important day to be here in Washington today also. But when we come back to the Washington to the summit, then clearly it was a demonstration of the continued strength and unity of the transatlantic alliance. We made important decisions to strengthen the alliance deterrence and defense with the focus of advancing on the credibility of the NATO's defense plans.

And we also provided the Ukraine with substantial practical support package and sent a clear signal that Ukraine's path toward NATO's membership is irreversible. In the coming years, we must focus on scaling up the delivery of the alliance's most critical military capabilities such as air defense, fires and battle decisive munitions and increase our defense industrial capacity.

To achieve that in today's security reality, we all understand that two percent is no longer enough. We therefore need to discuss and agree higher spending targets such as to 2.5 or three percent, and this could be a concrete deliverable for NATO's 2025 summit in Hague. Estonia is leading by example. As you mentioned, yes, we have over three percent already now, but I have some more good news.

So we just finished the new coalition negotiations and we go above four percent in 2026. So maybe even 4.4, 4.5 depending the economy. But yes, we will - we will invest a lot. And 40 percent of that money we will invest directly to ammunition and - and fires, so - and the new capabilities, so we - we are doing our share to keep alliance safe.

And of course, bilateral relations between Estonia and US stand on solid ground. And the conventional military and military presence of US forces in Europe remains critical to deterring Russia. And we are very, very grateful for the continued persistent heel to toe US presence in Estonia and in the other Baltic states.

I would like to take this occasion to thank all the US servicemen and women who have rotated to Estonia over the past year and a half and also their families and close ones for their support. We must remain strong in our commitment in also ensuring Ukraine's victory and its irreversible path to full Euro-Atlantic integration, including NATO membership.

The US leadership in supporting Ukraine has been remarkable. And thank you very much also personally for you and of course, all these positive developments in Estonia and US defense cooperation and also the practical support to Ukraine are closely linked with the outstanding leadership that you, Lloyd has showed over the past years.

Therefore, Estonian president has decided to award you Lloyd with the second class of order of the Cross of Terra Mariana. And I am honored to personally bestow this award to you later today. Mr. Secretary, Secretary Lloyd, thank you once more for welcoming us here today and for your outstanding leadership.

And of course, as you mentioned already, I also look forward to a productive discussion what we will have right now.

MR. AUSTIN: Mr. Minister thanks for - for being here. And again, I do look forward to a great discussion. So thanks everybody.

Public link

Please use the above public link if you want to share this noodl on another website.