External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar is expected to visit Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania later this year to inaugurate Indian embassies in these strategically significant Baltic States. Emphasizing cyber security collaboration, officials note Estonia and Lithuania’s expertise in the field.
External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar is likely to visit the three Baltic States of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania later this year. All three countries, increasingly important for both strategic and economic reasons, now have full-fledged Indian embassies and EAM is expected to “inaugurate” them.
Cyber security is an area of cooperation. As Lieutenant General V.G. Khandare (Retd.), who was advisor to defence minister Rajnath Singh till very recently, said: “Estonia and also, Lithuania are among the best in the world in cyber security. We have already worked with Estonia and we are keen to do more.” The three countries, once part of the Soviet Union, call themselves “frontline NATO states” and have dramatically increased defence spending to about 5 percent of GDP since the Russia-Ukraine war began three years ago. Importantly, NATO’s cyber headquarters is not in the three P5 countries of the United States, France and Britain or even Germany or Italy, but in Tallinn, Estonia.
With increased defence spending has come the possibility of the Baltic states looking at NATO compatible Indian-made weaponry. Trade ties are getting stronger: together, the three Baltic states have trade links of over $1 billion.
