Pro-NATO party wins Estonia’s parliamentary elections

The governing Reform Party has won parliamentary elections in Estonia as concerns rise over the party’s pro-NATO policies which may anger the neighboring Russia.

Results announced late Sunday showed the outgoing Prime Minister Taavi Roivas’s Reform part winning 30 seats of the 101-member parliament

“The Reform Party is the 2015 winner of the parliamentary elections,” Roivas announced on Estonia’s ERR public television.

Roivas could enter a coalition with the rival pro-Russian Centre party which gained 27 seats in the votes. However, the 35-year-old leader has ruled out any such deal as tensions have been on the rise over the past months between Estonia and Russia.

This may force the youngest leader in the Eurozone to extend his coalition with the Social Democrats, his current junior coalition partners that gained only 15 seats in Sunday elections.

Roivas announced in mid February that his country is to host additional NATO forces on its soil. He said the country is ready to make a special investment program worth €40 million for hosting the additional forces.

NATO and Russia are already at loggerheads over the crisis in east Ukraine with the West accusing Moscow of having a hand in the conflict. Kremlin denies that, saying that it will never allow Ukraine to suppress the ethnic Russian population in the east of the country.