‘You can feel Putin’s threat’: The British soldiers guarding Nato’s Russian border
“IDF, IDF”, shouts a voice: “indirect fire” is raining down from the skies.
A British soldier carrying an assault rifle, with green and brown paint smeared on his face and camouflage from helmet to boots, drops suddenly to the ground.
Others scramble for shelter in a freshly dug trench or under the camouflage netting, which disguises the entrance to the hidden British command post. A tense silence falls.
“We either hear the whistle of the bombs or we hear them landing,” says Stuart McGregor, the colour sergeant of 2nd Battalion, The Royal Regiment of Scotland, lying flat to avoid shrapnel.
“Because we have a bomb proof shelter, it won’t affect us as much. It would probably have hit me, because I’m outside,” he adds nonchalantly.
McGregor looks up. A small white drone is circling overhead, scanning through the canvas of the trees to search for the soldiers hiding below.
“I don’t know at this stage if it’s an enemy or if it’s friendly,” he says. “If we don’t get under cover, in about five to 10 minutes we’ll probably have indirect fire on top of us again.”

Stuart McGregor at the entrance to a British command post during a war drill in Estonia (Photo: Molly Blackall/ The i Paper)
The war these soldiers are fighting is a simulation, designed by Nato to drill its response to a Russian attack on its eastern flank.
The head of the British army said last year that the military has until 2027 to prepare to fight or deter a war, as threats from Russia, China, Iran and North Korea converge.
Analysts believe that, should Russia emerge from Ukraine peace negotiations with a favourable deal, it could be emboldened to launch a new invasion, and Estonia, which spent 50 years under Russian occupation until 1991, could be a target.

A British officer looks out of a trench built in Estonia. The blue on his uniform denotes the UK’s role as the defending force during the war drill, while the attackers wear orange (Photo: Molly Blackall/ The i Paper)
The country is now at the epicentre of the British Army’s plans for Russian threats, and home to the largest contingent of British troops anywhere in the world.
Prince William recently visited troops in Estonia, joining them in a Nato tank in a signal of the UK’s commitment to collective defence.
One thousand personnel are stationed there on six-month rotation, with additional deployments for exercises such as this, and the UK last year signed a new defence agreement to put more troops on readiness to support.
Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Ministry of Defence has been working to bolster the “capability and lethality of our forces deployed in Estonia”, it said, “because Nato’s security is our security”.
Drone warfare ‘absolutely game changing’ for UK
Drone combat has become central to war drills like these. The unmanned aircraft have come to define the war in Ukraine, used for both reconnaissance and attacks.
Cheap and accessible, they are capable of taking out some of Nato’s most powerful weaponry, and Ukrainian soldiers say they can rarely leave trenches in daylight without being spotted.
The British Army is ramping up its drone development and counter-drone response, including a new “microwave weapon” to blast drones in mid-air, effectively frying their electronic systems to make them crash or malfunction.
But they are also learning how to avoid detection, with Nato allies using decoys and dummy positions, and digging entire howitzers – artillery used to fire shells – into the ground.
The British troops have set up a command post inside an old Soviet missile silo, while the French forces are based in an abandoned barn on a derelict farm.

A UK command post, built in an abandoned Soviet missile silo, in Estonia. Troops are living inside the bunker during a Nato war drill (Photo: Molly Blackall/The i Paper)
“A civilian building is important for us to make sure we are not detected by those drones, because being detected means being dead in a few minutes,” says the French commander.
“There is no second chance in warfare. So what we do here is play it as realistically as possible, because we know that if we are deployed one day in real [life], there will be no second chance. It’s just a few minutes between the detection and the strike of the enemy. That’s very quick.”
In one trench, British soldiers lie asleep in small hollows. They spent 12 hours under siege from a Swedish battlegroup, which is playing the enemy in the exercise, the night before.
“You’ll notice that the forward positions have all got overhead built-in protections so that if there is any threat from fires from the enemy, at least we’ve got some cover,” a captain from the Duke of Lancaster’s Regiment says, walking through the trench.

A British soldier carrying an assault rifle crouches down in a trench in Estonia (Photo: Molly Blackall/ The i Paper)
“It’s important we’ve got cover from overhead because the drone threat is so significant that we’ve got to make sure we’re concealed and also that we’re camouflaged as well.
“We’ve got an extensive drone fleet. It’s something that we’re continually developing; not only the procurement of the drones, but how we use them tactically. It’s been absolutely game-changing for us.”
British troops feel ‘real, palpable threat’ of Russia
For this exercise, this French battalion is working as part of a British brigade, who are themselves part of an Estonian division.
This is Nato in action; a fusion of different nationalities, speaking their own language and bringing their own equipment, learning to work together as one well-oiled machine.
But training in Estonia not only helps with physical preparations for war. One British officer, who preferred not to give his name, said the proximity to Russia helps troops to psychologically ready for conflict.

British officers strategise for a Nato war drill in Estonia (Photo: Molly Blackall/ The i Paper)
“You get a real sense when you’re out here from the Estonians that there is a real, palpable threat,” he says.
“In the UK, sometimes you can be a bit geographically dislocated from it, but talking to the Estonians, being around their military and people living out here, they really do feel there is a threat. It does feel real and alive once you’re out here.”
How ready do he and his troops feel?
“We’re trialling a lot of new kit and equipment and hopefully we’re a fairly swept-up, ready-to-go battlegroup that can contribute to both Estonia and Nato,” he says.
“Nato’s got an awful lot of capability, and we’ve done an awful lot of training, so you can be nothing but confident in our own abilities if that moment came. But hopefully it doesn’t.”