Despite the changed security situation and the Russian invasion of Ukraine being in its fourth year – or 12th year if taking the annexation of Crimea and the shadow war in Donbas as a starting point – Estonia has only just begun to grasp that civilian shelters are not luxuries, but necessities.

Finland, which joined NATO just over three years ago, has been working on this aspect of civil defense for about 80 years now. The country's geology allows for instance for some highly durable facilities, and it was not hampered by Soviet occupation in the way that Estonia was.

Rescue Board (Päästeamet) shelter expert Leho Lemsalu told "Aktuaalne kaamera": "In that time, they have built over 50,000 shelters in the country, which could indeed accommodate nearly 4.8 million people. Obviously, not every person in Finland has a shelter right next door to them, but the figure is impressive. They have truly invested in this — this is no cheap affair, it didn't come for free, yet today they can be proud of it."

Ministry of the Interior's deputy secretary general for rescue and crisis preparedness Tuuli Räim concurred, saying: "Finland is in fact today a model for all of Europe in organizing sheltering. What they have done correctly is that they never abandoned organizing sheltering or their general defense concept for the Finnish state, which means that today we are still decades or more behind Finland."

Finland's population is around 5.5 million, with emergency shelter space as mentioned available for 4.8 million people of these. In Helsinki, there is even a surfeit of shelter space, meaning that in a crisis there would be space for tourists, for instance, or foreign workers too.

Estonia has made a start, however, mapping public shelter locations, marked on site with a blue triangle on an orange background, and numbering 270 nationwide – space for about 230,000 people, or less than a fifth of the total populace.

Räim added that not everything Finland with regard to shelters does has to be replicated in Estonia. "Of course, we can't and don't have to copy everything from Finland. For example, those rock shelters they have in Finland — these would be truly difficult to replicate in Estonia due to our own specific conditions. However, all the other principles that are in place in Finland today, we have thoroughly reviewed and assessed what fits for us," Räim said.

Another difference is that unlike in Finland, where wartime shelters are well-maintained and modernized, Estonia's shelters are outdated, poorly located and maintained and date back to the Soviet era.

Some shelters, Lemsalu said, are in zones closed off to the public or far from population centers, though the quality varies: "Some that are in residential building basements are very usable," he said.

Not only does Estonia lag behind Finland in this area, but also Latvia and Lithuania are ahead in some ways, "Aktuaalne kaamera" reported.

An emergency law the Lithuanian government sent to parliament last Thursday is already in effect, and an equivalent one has been adopted in Latvia.

These laws mandate that new builds must incorporate shelters, while existing ones must be adapted to include a shelter area.

EU support is also viable. For example, the European Commission allows 15 percent of cohesion fund money to be reallocated to the defense sector. This would translate to €200 million in Estonia's case. Lessons from Ukraine's experience are also being taken on board.

Domestic funds should be added to this. Minister of the Interior Igor Taro (Eesti 200) said: "The Rescue Board has the opportunity to implement its own support measures amounting to €18 million. Specifically, for instance, to support the creation of shelter options. This depends on what the support rate percentage is — the smaller the percentage, the greater the amount it can leverage, and it also has to be reasonable. Be it 50-50, or perhaps one-third from the state, one-third from the municipality, and one-third from the owner — this is all a matter of consideration on how exactly to carry it out."

Overall in Estonia, however, stakeholders say that understanding and awareness of the need for civil protection are improving. Last week, EU interior ministers met in Brussels and established a joint cooperation format to outline how to push forward crisis preparedness in member states, while the mayors of Tallinn, Riga, and Vilnius signed a memorandum of understanding to improve cooperation in the civil defense network across all three Baltic states.

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