Welcome aces, to the History of Estovakia documentary!
The Federal Republic of Estovakia is our antagonist country in the game Ace Combat 6 and is located
on the eastern edge of the Anean continent.
Estovakia has a population of 63.5 million people according to the 2014 census and is
situated close to Strangereal's North Pole and a great deal of its territory is cold
and mountainous, however I should also mention that Estovakia has several islands and they
will become more important when we get to the Estovakian civil war.
The first thing we know about Estovakia is that on October 8 of 1990, some large offshore
oil facilities located on the northeast of the country were abandoned.
Four years later, in 1994, the Ulysses asteroid was detected and was expected only to hit
the continent of Usea, because of that the Anean countries did not take any particular
measure since they were deemed safe from the meteor catastrophe, however in 1998 a new
space probe found out that the Ulysses asteroid had a hollow interior and because of that
the asteroid would shatter into several pieces.
This new finding added the continent of Anea to the estimated area of impact and the big
thing about this is that the Anean countries had only roughly a year of notice to prepare
for the fall of the asteroid.
Emmeria, Estovakia‘s western neighbor, focused on building several underground shelters to
protect the civilian population while Estovakia went on the offensive by building a giant
railgun called Chandelier on the northwest of the country in an attempt to intercept
the fragments of the Ulysses asteroid.
From July 8 to July 20 of 1999, fragments of the Ulysses asteroid began falling over Strangereal.
Fortunately for Emmeria, the strategy of constructing several underground bunkers worked, however
Estovakia was unable to complete construction of its giant asteroid-intercepting railgun
because they didn't have enough time and resources to finish the monumental and complex project.
As a result, several fragments of the Ulysses asteroid rained down on Estovakia destroying
the country's economy, infrastructure and taking a very high toll of civilian casualties.
The road to Estovakia’s recovery was going to be a long one and thinking about this the
neighbouring country of Emmeria started sending aid to Estovakia in an attempt to speed up
Estovakia’s recovery.
However in the year of 2000, the central Estovakian government had lost power because its leaders
went into hiding after failing to properly deal with the disaster and as result several
smaller factions appeared all around the country and managed to control small regions of Estovakia.
And given that these factions started disrupting the flow of aid from Emmeria, the Emmerian
government stopped the aid program to Estovakia.
In the year of 2004 there was a initiative to merge all the three Anean countries, Estovakia,
Emmeria and Nordennavic into one called the Republic of Anea and so the preparatory agency
for the Republic of Anea was created.
On a side note, this event only happened to address the issue that in Ace Combat 5, which
takes place in the year of 2010, the continent of Anea is shown as if it was only one single
country since the borders between Estovakia, Emmeria and Nordennavic are not
displayed on the map.
Now let's go back to the documentary.
Over the years the internal problems within Estovakia continued and in 2007 one faction
called the Lyes United Front (or LUF for short) took over the western portion of the country
including the country's capital.
Emmeria, who was eager to restart its aid program, contacted the LUF about the idea
and the two sides began talking about the deal.
The LUF proposed its own project for Estovakia’s rehabilitation to Emmeria, the Emmerians approved
the idea and soon after the Emmerians started sending aid to the LUF.
Now the Lyes United Front was supposed to use that aid and money to help Estovakia’s
recovery after the Ulysses, right?
But that's not really what happened, they used the Emmerian funds to buy new weapons
and vehicles which in turn were used to suppress rival factions and this resulted in a LUF
expansion over the Estovakian territory.
As time passed the LUF’s territory continued to grow but this doesn't mean that there was
no resistance.
One particular city, the city of Gledina, refused to obey the LUF’s rule and because
of this the LUF’s forces surrounded the city and cut off the city’s lifelines.
As a result essential supplies, including food and aid, could enter the city and this
move by the LUF ended with a massive starvation of the civilian population resulting in over
200,000 deaths, this being the only known case of a genocide within Strangereal.
Outraged by the LUF’s actions against the civilian population, several other factions
in Estovakia rose to fight against the LUF, thus officially starting the Estovakian Civil War in the year of 2007.
As you can see in the map I have divided the Estovakian territory into five different regions,
each region represents one of the main factions during the Estovakian Civil War however two
notes about this.
First, this is only a map that I created for illustration purposes only so please don't
take it was as an official map, and second, there were probably more factions in the conflict
but because they were small and less relevant I have not included them.
These five factions are the Lyes United Front, the one who started the civil war and is located
on the western portion of the country and is being funded by Emmeria by using money
from the Emmerian Aid Program to fuel its army - and for the record, this was happening
without Emmeria’s knowledge.
The three next factions are the Independent Tariff Federation, the Island Coalition and
the Northern Highlands Faction which also joined the war to fight against the LUF, however
not much is known about them and they only play a minor role in the overall history of
the conflict.
Lastly we have the Eastern Faction to complete the five factions and this one is quite important.
The Eastern Faction was lead by General Gustav Dvornik and when he mobilized his forces to
fight in the Estovakian civil war he also hired mercenaries from Belka and North Osea
(which used to be South Belka before the Belkan War) to develop new weapons that were meant
to be used in the conflict.
One of the notable mercenaries that came from Belka was Lorenz Ridel, who served as Gault 7
during the Belkan War, and he brought Belkan technology coming from the XB-0 heavy command
cruiser which resulted in the development of the Aigaion Heavy Command Cruiser together
with its aerial fleet consisting of the Kottos and Gyges aircraft which were responsible
for ECM and air defence duties respectively.
Moving away from the civil war, in the year of 2008, the countries of Anea were represented
on Strangereal's G7 summit that was being hosted by Osea on the Arkbird.
However shortly after that, the Republic of Anea project was frozen due to the ongoing
Estovakian civil war.
As the civil war progressed, the LUF managed to defeat and occupy territory that belonged
to the Independent Tariff Federation, but its advance then stalled due to the rapid
expansion of the front lines.
Meanwhile the Eastern Faction had been able to absorb the Island Coalition and the Northern
Highlands Faction, therefore leaving the LUF and the Eastern Faction as the two main powers
left in the civil war.
Now do you remember that large oil facility in northern Estovakia that I mentioned in
the beginning of the video?
As it happens, that facility had been abandoned in the year of 1990, but now in 2008, the
Eastern Faction took over the facility to start building the Aigaion and the rest of
the aerial fleet.
During this time the Eastern Faction was also working on the Chandelier, however they were
not able to solve the heating problem and therefore they could not use it during the
civil war.
Two years later, in 2010, the Emmerian government finally stopped sending aid to the LUF because
of the civil war, however it was already too late because the damage had already been done.
The Eastern Faction, seeing that Emmeria had been backing the LUF for the last three years
of the conflict, now considered that Emmeria was just as bad as the LUF.
And the bloody Estovakian civil war continued for three more years until it was time for
the final showdown.
From January 15 to the 22 of 2013, the LUF executed a large scale land and sea assault
against the Eastern Faction that was meant to break the deadlock in the war.
With overwhelming numbers the LUF managed to put the Eastern Faction’s troops in a
massive retreat but this didn’t last long, shortly after the Eastern Faction deployed
its aerial fleet, the Strigon Team and the Vampire Team on a counter-attack mission.
The tide of the war had quickly changed and in this counter-attack, the aerial fleet and
its supporting squadrons managed to destroy about 80% of the LUF’s forces in just one week.
It didn’t last very long and the Eastern Faction defeated the LUF shortly after in
a battle close to the Estovakian-Emmerian border, a battle in which Lieutenant General
Lyes, the leader of the LUF, was killed.
With the civil war now over, the Eastern Faction then created a new central government under
the command of the Generals, which included military commanders of the Eastern Faction
and was primarily lead by General Gustav Dvornik.
Later in the month of November of 2013, the Estovakian foreign minister Isaac Arensky
was about to go on a trip to Emmeria in order to attend a conference however his vehicle
was attacked while he was going to the airport.
Foreign minister Arensky was knocked out by a grenade that was thrown at him and he died
a couple of days later on December the 2.
Many people believe that this incident was orchestrated by members of the Eastern Faction
since Arensky and the Estovakian Prime Minister at the time, Jacob Šuker, had bad relations.
However at least the official blame was put on surviving members of the Lyes United Front
when the minister’s death was announced, something that happened only in 2014 because
his death was kept as a secret in December of 2013.
In 2014, the year after the end of the civil war, Estovakia faced the following situation:
unemployment rate of over 40%, infrastructure destroyed or non-existent and the country
was even under threat of armed groups spread across the country that wanted to proclaim
independence from the central government.
The Amherst Research Institute, an organization located in Emmeria, estimated that without
any international assistance the country of Estovakia would take over 30 years to recover
its economy to the levels of the 1990s - the pre-Ulysses levels.
Trying to help their neighbouring country, the Emmerians once more restarted their aid
program to Estovakia.
On February 4 there was actually a conference between the two nations to discuss this topic,
and while Emmeria said it had no intention of stopping the aid program, the Emmerians
also said that they feared that the program could be used to fuel and develop another
military dictatorship and therefore repeat the failure that had previously happened during
the civil war with Emmeria backing the LUF.
Estovakia’s new Foreign Minister, Antonina Koznick, a former captain of the navy for
the Eastern Faction and the one who replaced foreign minister Arensky, stated that Emmeria
was partially responsible for the Estovakian civil war by assisting the LUF.
However the Emmerian Ambassador Bell stated that it wasn’t the case and that the aid
program was supposed to go to the early rehabilitation of Estovakia and not to support the LUF and its atrocities.
The Emmerian Ambassador even continued and said: "Has she ever thought about their position
of being assisted?
I cannot help think that she is trying to take Estovakians' frustrations out on us Emmerians."
Because of a discussion like this the tensions between the two nations increased.
Jumping to April of 2015, a Yuktobanian spy satellite was able to spot the Aigaion at
the oil facility located in northeast Estovakia, and finally on August 30 of 2015 Estovakia
declared war and invaded Emmeria thus starting the Emmerian - Estovakian War, also known
as the Anean Continental War.
The most important factor that lead to this war was the Estovakian hatred towards Emmeria
since Emmeria financed the Estovakian Civil War through its aid program, however another
possible reason in addition to that, and please take this as my personal opinion and not as
a fact since it is not confirmed, is that because of the horrible economic situation
in the home front the Estovakian generals wanted to rally the citizen’s patriotic
feelings and unite them against a common enemy by performing a rapid invasion of the country
that financed their civil war - Emmeria.
This would serve as a distraction to the Estovakian population and their problems at home, something
that has happened in real life and was one of the causes of the Falklands War in 1982
between Argentina and the UK.
Coming back to the story, Estovakia invaded Emmeria and quickly took over the country.
Of course these are the events covered in Ace Combat 6 Fires of Liberation and I will
not explain the Emmerian - Estovakian war in detail this time, instead I will leave
that to another video.
What you do have to know is that even though Estovakia deployed its aerial fleet and the
Strigon Squadron, the Estovakians were unable to defend themselves from the Emmerian counter-attack
and even though they deployed their giant railgun, Chandelier, which was now ready,
they could not win the conflict.
The Emmerian - Estovakian war ended sometime after April 1 of 2016, the day when Chandelier
was destroyed, as there was a coup d’etat in Estovakia that overthrew the generals and
formed a new government, a government which quickly restored peace between the two countries.
So this was the History of Estovakia, a Strangereal documentary compiling everything we know about
the country.
I would like to thank the Acepedia staff for the help I’ve got in the research phase
of this video and if you want to know some more additional details about Estovakia and
related topics you can take a look at the description.
Also a fun fact, remember that the first Estovakian Foreign Minister was named Isaac?
Well, this might be a reference to Vice-Admiral Jorge Isaac Anaya of the Argentine Navy who
was involved in the Falklands War and even planned a sabotage operation against ships
from the Royal Navy in Gibraltar.
Anyways, hope you guys have enjoyed this video and that you can share it with other aces
as well to spread the Ace Combat lore.
This was Ace Combat Fan and stay tuned to the channel for more Ace Combat!