Johannes Kert

Johannes Kert (3 December 1959 – 4 March 2021) was an Estonian politician and military officer, General- leutenant. He served as the Commander of the Estonian Defence Forces from 1996 until 2000. He retired from the military in 2008. Since 2014, Kert had been a member of the Estonian Reform Party.

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Johannes Kert, who as the former Commander of the Estonian Defence Forces led Estonia towards NATO and helped rebuild the Estonian military, has died at the age of 61; the boots of this straightforward military man, who didn’t waste words or spare time for niceties, will be impossible to fill, the Estonian MP, Eerik-Niiles Kross, writes.

The Estonian political, defence and military life has suffered an unexpected loss. Lieutenant general Johannes Kert, who played an integral role in rebuilding the Estonian Defence Forces, has died far too soon at the age of 61. A gravitational force that strengthened Estonia’s confidence in its post-independence defence, he was also the brain behind NATO’s early cyber defence initiatives and a formidable politician and MP in the latter years of his life.

Kert was born in 1959 in a southeastern town Petseri, part of Estonia as per the Tartu Peace Treaty. His birthplace was doubly occupied by the Soviet Union. First, it was annexed with the rest of Estonia by Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, the Red Army, and the NKVD (The People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs of the Soviet Union, basically the Soviet interior ministry) in 1940. Then, in 1945, Moscow changed the “internal borders” of the Soviet Union and gave Petseri to the Russian Soviet Socialist Republic (now the Russian Federation). Today, Petseri remains on the other side of the Estonian-Russian control line and would remain in Russian territory if the border treaty agreed with Russia would be ratified (it has not been for the last 15 years).

Johannes did not talk much about his birthplace. But its fate must have had an impact on his choices during his career – and his passion for his work. He dedicated his life to making sure no more Estonian territory would ever be given away, whether under diplomatic pressure or under military threat.

A protector from bullying and humiliation

An athlete in his youth, Kert trained as a coach at the University of Tartu and was forced to serve as lieutenant in the Soviet Army after his graduation. He served in what is now Lithuania, at a base where many Estonian conscripts did their initial training at the beginning of their two obligatory years of service before being assigned to remote Soviet military units (much like their fathers and grandfathers had been sent to the remote GULAG prison camps). Many in his unit remember Johannes Kert as their protector from the usual Soviet Army bullying and humiliation.

In the late 1980s, when the power of the Soviet Union started to show its first cracks, Johannes returned to Estonia and joined forces with the independence movement. He did what he knew best and felt was his mission. He used his skills, learned from the opponent, and started to organise an underground Estonian defence league in Tartu, his former university town. In 1990, still in the Soviet-occupied Estonia, he became the commander of the Tartu Defence League.

https://estonianworld.com/people/obituary-johannes-kert-the-former-commander-of-the-estonian-defence-forces/