“Regarding requests from Estonia and etc about deploying additional military contingents on their territory, this just there is evidence of the validity of our concerns, and this is the evidence that we are not the cause of the escalation of tensions — Peskov told reporters (quote from RIA Novosti).
The Chancellor of the Estonian Ministry of Defense, Kusti Salm, said that the republic is ready to deploy up to 5,000 soldiers of the NATO Rapid Reaction Force. He also added that if the Alliance sends more troops to the eastern flank, they may decide to deploy in another country. From a military effectiveness point of view, it would be reasonable to place some units in Romania, for example, Salm concluded.
In 2016 at the NATO summit in Warsaw, it was decided to deploy the alliance's multinational battalions in Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia and Poland. The Estonian battalion is under the command of Great Britain, the Latvian battalion is led by Canada, the Lithuanian — Germany, Polish — USA. The battle group stationed in the Estonian Tapa has more than a thousand servicemen.
17 December 2021 The Russian Foreign Ministry has published drafts of an agreement with the United States and an agreement with NATO on guarantees and security. The documents provide for the abandonment of deployment of ground-based intermediate and shorter-range missiles outside the territory of the alliance, as well as expansion of the alliance to east, closer to Russian borders. Consultations between Russia and the United States took place on 10 January in Geneva; NATO, a 13 January — meeting of the OSCE Permanent Council.
Peskov called the results of the meetings unsuccessful, and Ryabkov said that in during the consultations, the United States and their allies did give a pronounced negative answer, but while not expressed their readiness to meet the key requirements of Russia. On January 11, U.S. Ambassador to NATO Julianne Smith, in an interview with CNN, stated that there were no great opportunities for compromise with Russia on the issue of non-expansion of the NATO alliance, and U.S. First Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman the next day noted that part Russian proposals on security guarantees are "unpassable".