TALLINN, Estonia (AP) — Spooked by Russia's intervention in Ukraine, Estonia is hoping for a strong signal of support from President Barack Obama when he arrives Wednesday in a country that two decades ago had Russian troops on its soil. The U.S. and many other Western countries never recognized the nearly five-decade Soviet occupation, during which tens of thousands of Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians were deported to Siberia. After the Soviet Union crumbled, the Baltic countries turned to the West and joined the European Union and NATO in 2004, irritating Russia. Baltic leaders want NATO to establish permanent bases in the region, but some allies have been wary of doing anything that might endanger a 1997 agreement with Moscow under which NATO pledged not to permanently station substantial numbers of soldiers in Eastern Europe. "The current situation shows that the principle of collective territorial defense hasn't gone away — on the contrary," Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves said Sunday, marking the 20th anniversary of the exit of the last Russian troops from Estonian territory.