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Press Release No 75 Brigadier General Märt Tiru IM MEMORIAM

10. October 2006 - 11:27
Brigadier General Märt Tiru IM MEMORIAM October 10, 1947 – October 18, 2005 Today, on October 18, 2005, Brigadier General Märt Tiru passed away after a serious illness.

The Ministry of Defence and The General Staff will always remember Brigadier General Tiru as an innovative and intelligent officer. Märt Tiru’s personal devotion and contribution to Estonia’s NATO accession process is difficult to overvalue.

Märt Tiru was born on October 10, 1947, in Tallinn, the capital of Estonia. In 1967, he graduated from the Tallinn Polytechnical Institute, where he specialised in industrial engineering. 

After his basic military service in the Soviet Army, Tiru attended the Staff College for Military Communications Engineering in Kiev.

Tiru has served in the Soviet Army as the senior engineer, the senior radio communications engineer, and the deputy commander of a mechanised infantry division. During Perestroika, Tiru had himself transferred to Estonia, where he served in the Rapla regional conscription commissariat till 1991.

In November 1991, Tiru was made commander of the Raplamaa Provincial National Defence Sector. This was followed by service, in various highly responsible capacities, on the General Staff of the Defence Forces. For a period, Märt Tiru served in the Border Guard.
After General Aleksander Einseln left the service, Tiru resumed serving on the General Staff of the Defence Forces, as commander, first, of the Peacekeeping Section, and later, of the Foreign Relations Department.

On January 3, 2000, President Lennart Meri appointed Colonel Märt Tiru to be acting commander of the Defence Forces. On June 30 of the same year, the president promoted Tiru to be the first Estonian brigadier general. After a new commander of the Defence Forces had been appointed, Tiru served as advisor to the commander, and later, as Estonia’s military attaché in the United States.

Brigadier General Märt Tiru has been one of the developers of Baltbat, the joint Estonian, Latvian, and Lithuanian infantry battalion. And at his initiative, Estonian soldiers began to serve, in 1995, as part of the United Nations forces, on peacekeeping missions in Croatia, Bosnia, and Lebanon. Thus, Estonian military personnel acquired invaluable experiences in the realm of international cooperation, and Estonia, as a state, acquired, in a military sense, an international dimension.

Colleagues will remember Märt Tiru as a demanding and enterprising officer, but at the same time, as a very humane superior.

The Estonian nation has honoured General Tiru’s service and dedication with the Kotkarist (Eagle’s Cross) III Class.

Brigadier General Märt Tiru is mourned by his wife, daughter, and son. 

We offer our sincerest condolences to his loved ones, and bow our heads in mourning. 


The Ministry of Defence
The Defence Forces