Estonia paid 70 million euros for artillery ammunition intended for Ukraine. The ammunition arrived late, and when it finally did, it turned out to be defective. Useless. So useless that the state audit office had to put it in writing.

Defence minister Hanno Pevkur resigned. Not because he had personally signed anything, but because, as he put it, "a leader must have the strength and the courage to take responsibility". He added that ministers do not count shells, but that the audit findings raise a question of political responsibility.

Stop there for a moment. A minister resigns over a procurement he did not sign, in a country of 1.3 million people, for ammunition paid for by the European Union through the European Peace Facility. Nobody made him. The audit office wrote a report, he read the findings and left.

The company that had never sold a weapon

The contract was signed in 2024 with the Italian firm Datasel S.r.l., owned by India's Neco Defense Munitions. A firm with no prior experience in selling arms. The current head of Estonia's Centre for Defence Investment now says the contract should never have been signed with a contractor lacking experience.

That is the sentence anyone who has worked with public procurement in the Balkans knows by heart. It gets said only once the money is gone. The difference here is that somebody picked up his own office and left with it, instead of explaining why the criteria were written that way.

A criminal investigation has also been opened on the basis of the audit findings for 2025 and 2026.

The country that pays the most per head

Estonia raised its defence spending from 2 percent of GDP in 2022 to 3.4 percent in 2025, with a plan to reach 5.4 percent in 2026. For 2026 it has also pledged over 117 million dollars in military aid to Ukraine. This is not a country that economises on defence - it is a country that spends more than almost anyone in NATO, because it looks east and is not joking.

Which is exactly why the scandal stings twice over. When a small country squeezes its citizens to pay more for defence, the least it can offer back is that the money goes to someone who knows how to make a shell.

The question that remains is not an Estonian one. How many ministers here would stay in office after a report like that, and for how long?