MP's message to Putin: ‘You take your fleet and you f**k off out of it!’
IF VLADIMIR Putin’s forces attempt an incursion into the former Soviet Baltic regions they will find Eerik-Niiles Kross waiting and ready to fight.
GETTY
The Estonian MP is a former head of the country’s intelligence services and owns a private security consulting firm called TRUSTCORP.
He is lauded in his native Estonia where he is known as the Estonian James Bond.
And he has a robust message to NATO allies pussyfooting around the expansionist aims of Russia’s Vladimir Putin which stretch the boundaries of diplomatic language.
He accused Mr Putin of invading sovereign territories because he knew the West was "soft" and added: “A strong Western response would have been this: The moment the first little Green Men arrived, the phone call to Putin, ‘You have 24 hours to get out of there, my Sixth Fleet is on the way.
Related articles
nc
You take your fleet, and you take your Sevastopol base, and you f*** off
“'You take your fleet, and you take your Sevastopol base, and you f*** off. That’s it. Otherwise, they’re coming. By the way, we’ll kick your a**’.”
Mr Kross was in Iraq working for the US-led Coalition Provisional Authority, on contract with the British Foreign Office, after the Saddam Hussein was toppled.
And he was in Georgia during its brief war with Russia in 2008, helping direct counter-propaganda operations.
Russia wants him arrested and he is only allowed to travel to the US on official diplomatic business but in Estonia he is seen as a 007-style patriot.
GETTY
Mr Kross was part of the delegation that persuaded Boris Yeltsin to pull Russian troops out of Estonia in 1994 after more than a half-century of occupation.
But has been warning of their potential return ever since.
He said: “The core question for Putin is: ‘What can I get away with?’
“He is constantly pushing the borders: airspace violations, massive media craziness, constant allegations that NATO and the West is to blame for everything.
“Putin is sort of expanding the space of crazy stuff he can do. It kind of projects him as stronger.
“So, he did Georgia, and he got away with it. Nice. Very nice. His math was clearly, with Crimea, that he could get away with it. He will see about east Ukraine.”
Mr Kross believes the West has underestimated Mr Putin and has no plan to deal with his aggression following Russia’s seizure of Crimea in 2014.
He said: “There was not even a good set of threats.
“There was nothing there. Obama, of course, always said the military option is off the table.
Mr Kross acknowledged that Russian aggression against Ukraine was a wake-up call that the West couldn’t ignore.
4,000 NATO troops take part in Lithuania’s largest exercise near Russia’s border
Mon, November 28, 2016Eleven NATO countries have sent 4,000 troops to Lithuania, the largest Baltic nation, to participate in this year’s Iron Sword exercises. The war games are meant to test the country’s ability to rapidly deploy a large number of troops.
Members of the U.S. 173rd Airborne Brigade fire blanks from a machine gun during a simulated attack
He said: “The NATO border is a red line. Now we have German tanks training in the Baltics.
“If you look at where they were before, that’s a dramatic change. It’s not that visible — they do not talk about it — but it’s really, really important.”
And the former student pro-independence activist is convinced that that Mr Putin will only respond to military threats.
He said: “Putin’s not reading the speeches. He’s reading the signs, and what is the action?
“He’s like a thug in a prison cell. He wants to see this new guy, with food from home in his bag, can I take it from him or not? That’s his thing.”
