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Join the Declassified Club at the rest is classified.com. What does the threat from Russia look like if you're on its borders?

And our Western spies and governments agreed on how to confront it.

Well, welcome to the rest is classified.

I'm Gordon Carrera.

This time there's no David McCloskey. That's because I'm actually in Estonia, one of the Baltic states in its capital.

Tallinn, I'm here for a security conference at which officials, spy chiefs, other types,

are all meeting to try and look at some of the threats, particularly from Russia, some of the issues

around Ukraine, but also the NATO alliance, how it's getting on, what the relationships with

the Americans are like. I've been here actually chairing a panel with some of the spy chiefs

from the region. I'd love to tell you more about that, but I'm afraid that really is classified

because it was an off-the-record

panel. But I've spent a couple of days here also going down to close to the Russian border

for a military exercise called Spring Storm, watching Estonian Defence Forces work with French

troops who were there in some camouflage vehicles and some British troops who were

camped in the woods in some, I think, less glamorous conditions in the French, strangely enough,

using some sensor devices which were hidden in trees and which could detect using video

imagery, but also seismic activity, whether, for instance,

Russian troops might at one point go over the border, all part of this exercise.

And it's all a sign, really, that Estonia, the Baltic states are on the front line from the Russian threat.

I mean, very, very close.

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