In setting up shelters, local government and the private sector have often outstripped central government, which has set aside ever-shrinking sums to civil defense as well, Klaos said.

Klaos recently penned an opinion piece, which he told "Esimene stuudio" on Tuesday: "It was also somewhat a self-critical and self-ironic look at how the development of population protection has proceeded over the long term. It has perhaps been a bit characteristically Estonian — rather cautious: 10 years ago, when Crimea had already been annexed, we thought that maybe we should start developing population protection. Four years ago, Kyiv got its first missile strikes from Russia, against residential buildings, and then we decided that now we will start acting."

Shelter construction is one area where Estonia has lagged behind many other countries, Klaos added, noting the first purpose-built public shelter will only be completed in around a year, five years after the full-scale invasion began.

The state's focus has primarily been on buildings where sheltering would be possible where needed, rather than building underground public shelters, he noted.

"When new buildings are constructed, shelters must be built under those buildings or within them. For all the others that already exist, certain rooms simply need to be adapted. We are also moving forward with the idea of creating mobile solutions for places where it is not possible to immediately build a proper shelter. These are quite similar approaches to those used, for example, in Israel, where a shelter is located on a city street," Klaos continued.

While in general progress has been made, "I am, however, a bit concerned about what the next steps are. I know what we can do tomorrow, but what happens the day after tomorrow and how far we can get with this first sprint? That's where we are a bit worried at the moment," Klaos said.

A major part of the issue has also been declining funding for the Rescue Board, he noted.

Early on in the war, "We got €51 million very quickly as a one-off cash injection to the Rescue Board, which allowed us to launch the development of population protection and improve our own crisis readiness. In the following years, the amount we have received for development has continuously gone down: 10, 7, 5… For this year, the direction of movement and the provision of opportunities for what we need to do has, from our perspective, not gone in the right direction," the director general went on.

In his opinion piece, Klaos had noted that while additional project-based funding for the years 2024–2027 was in hand, it was not clear what would happen beyond that period.

"At the moment, we are doing many things on a project basis, but that shouldn't really be the case. I very much like to observe from the side how the development of military national defense is currently being carried out: There are long-term plans, and long-term funding has been agreed for those plans. All the steps that are needed right now can indeed be thought through several years in advance: The needed procurement, the necessary people, and everything else alongside that," Klaos added.

Klaos also identified what he called a lack of long-term vision on civil protection.
"It is clear what is expected by the beginning of next year, and those things are funded. We know what our goals are five years from now and more or less also for 10 years, but at this point we do not yet know what will happen with those goals. Whether we do only what we can do simply with our own hands and big words, or whether there are things that should already be procured and so on," he said.

Despite all this, the current approach — requesting funding from the government for specific objectives and assigning a necessary sum to each activity — has been the right course, he noted.

Klaos said that it was important that politicians, rather than just asking for a fixed amount of money, state clearly what needed to be done. This approach will allow politicians to allocate resources, even as their view might sometimes diverge from the overall preferences of the country as a whole.

Klaos admitted to a certain amount of envy when glancing at some neighboring countries and their funding for national defense development and long-term solutions. In some cases, a certain percentage is set as the target for developing civil defense and crisis preparedness, while population protection guidance and actions that actually get carried out are incorporated in this approach.

In the case of Estonia's northern neighbor, Finland, it, along with "many other NATO eastern flank countries," has set aside huge sums of money to their rescue systems and population protection authorities, Klaos noted, including shelters: Be it construction of new, state-of-the-art shelters, restoring existing or aging ones, and installing shelter space in apartment block basements.

The latter category was only standardized in Estonia a few months ago.
"In the autumn of 2025, for the first time since Estonia regained its independence, we reached that point where we have a law stating that shelters must be built for buildings of a certain size. Most likely, the first shelter built specifically on the basis of this law will be completed perhaps a year from now, because the law will enter into force from the summer, and if a building of that size is constructed, then the shelter must be there," Klaos said.

Shelter locations have been actively mapped, with additional locations added, thanks mainly not to the state and central government, but to local governments and the private sector, he went on.

"At the end of last year, we were able to send thank-you letters to a very large number of companies and municipalities — thanks for responding to such a call and showing that you care about how people are protected," Klaos concluded.

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