Twelve British soldiers were injured in a major traffic pile-up in Estonia, close to the border with Russia, local media have reported.

Eight of the troops – part of a major NATO mission to deter Russian aggression – were airlifted back to the UK for hospital treatment on Sunday after the incident, which happened in snowy conditions on Friday, it is understood.

Five of these personnel have since been discharged with three still being kept in the military wing of the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham.

The crash happened at an intersection at around 5pm on Friday when the troops were travelling in three minibuses back to their base at Tapa.

Two civilian cars, driven by Estonians, are thought to have collided, triggering a chain reaction, with four other vehicles – comprising the three army Toyota minibuses and a third civilian car – piling into each other.

According to local media reports, the cars that initially collided were a Volvo S80, driven by a 37-year-old woman and a BMW 530D, driven by a 62-year-old woman.

The Estonian Postimees news site reported that 12 British soldiers were injured as well as five civilians. They were all taken to hospital by ambulance.

The British troops are serving in Estonia as part of Operation Cabrit, the UK’s contribution to NATO’s “enhanced forward presence” mission, which spans nations across the alliance’s eastern flank and is designed to deter attacks from Russia.

Around 900 British troops are deployed in Estonia, including a unit of Challenger 2 tanks.

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A spokesperson for the Ministry of Defence said: “Several British soldiers deployed on Operation CABRIT in Estonia were injured in a road traffic incident last Friday, 22nd November.

“Following hospital treatment in Estonia, eight personnel were flown back to the UK on an RAF C-17 for further treatment.

“Five have since been discharged and three are being cared for at the Royal Centre for Defence Medicine, Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham. We wish them all a speedy recovery.”

Defence Secretary John Healey said: “Following the road traffic incident involving British personnel in Estonia, my thoughts are with all those affected, and I wish those injured a full, swift recovery.

“Thanks to the Royal Centre for Defence Medicine at Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham for their excellent care.”

A motion has been filed to drop the charges against Donald Trump of plotting to overturn the 2020 US presidential election result.

Mr Trump was first indicted on four felonies in August 2023: Conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, obstruction of and an attempt to obstruct an official proceeding, and conspiracy against rights.

The president-elect pleaded not guilty to all charges and the case was then put on hold for months as Mr Trump’s team argued he could not be prosecuted.

On Monday, prosecutors working with special counsel Jack Smith, who had led the investigation, asked a federal judge to dismiss the case over long-standing US justice department policy, dating back to the 1970s, that presidents cannot be prosecuted while in office.

It marks the end of the department’s landmark effort to hold Mr Trump accountable for the attack on the US Capitol on 6 January 2021 when thousands of Trump supporters assaulted police, broke through barricades, and swarmed the Capitol in a bid to prevent the US Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory.

Mr Smith’s team had been assessing how to wind down both the election interference case and the separate classified documents case in the wake of Mr Trump’s election victory over vice president Kamala Harris earlier this month, effectively killing any chance of success for the case.

In court papers, prosecutors said “the [US] Constitution requires that this case be dismissed before the defendant is inaugurated”.

They said the ban [on prosecuting sitting presidents] “is categorical and does not turn on the gravity of the crimes charged, the strength of the government’s proof, or the merits of the prosecution, which the government stands fully behind”.

Mr Trump, who has said he would sack Mr Smith as soon as he takes office in January, and promised to pardon some convicted rioters, has long dismissed both the 2020 election interference case and the separate classified documents case as politically motivated.

He was accused of illegally keeping classified papers after leaving office in 2021, some of which were allegedly found in his Mar-a-Lago home in Florida.

The election interference case stalled after the US Supreme Court ruled in July that former presidents have broad immunity from prosecution, which Mr Trump’s lawyers exploited to demand the charges against him be dismissed.

Mr Smith’s request to drop the case still needs to be approved by US District Judge Tanya Chutkan.

No date had been set for a trial.

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At least 1,500 cases have been brought against those accused of trying to overthrow the election result on 6 January 2021, resulting in more than 1,100 convictions, the Associated Press said.

More than 950 defendants have been sentenced and 600 of them jailed for terms ranging from a few days to 22 years.

There was something desperately oppressive that came with being in Tbilisi today.

Perhaps it was the sight of hundreds of police officers, massed together and lurking in packs, waiting for something to happen. Maybe it was the dark clouds that poured rain over the streets.

But most likely it was the sense that this is a city, and a country, that is uncomfortable with itself. That Georgia is a nation in turmoil.

A month after its general election, this is a country where many still seethe, convinced that their votes were negated by corruption and that their nation is now led by imposters.

Georgian Dream may have been announced as the winning party, but it was a victory widely denounced as illegitimate.

The European Union, which Georgia has long wanted to join, has pointedly refused to endorse the result. And so here in Tbilisi, there are two worlds being played out.

In one, inside the towering Soviet-era government building, the MPs of Georgian Dream, along with their billionaire oligarch founder Bidzina Ivanishvili, have convened the new parliament for the first time, endorsed themselves as the leaders of Georgia and declared all to be well with the world.

And in the other universe, which starts a short stumble away in the square outside the same building, there are opposition politicians denouncing the election as a sham, the government as illegal and the new parliament as unconstitutional.

And around them are thousands of protesters who say their country has been stolen, some of whom think it’s all a Russian coup with Ivanishvili at its centre.

As a firecracker is hurled over a temporary metal barrier, and into the parliament building, I bump into Luka, who has left his job in Paris to become an activist in his home country.

He tells me he’s already been arrested once for protesting, and says he was beaten and thrown into jail. He is unrepentant and full of ire.

“This regime is a dictatorship,” he says. “They have no regard for human life. They have no regard for human decency. They care about money and staying in power.

“The Russian grasp is stronger than we’ve even realised. So this should be a message to everyone in Europe as well, that Russia is not that easy to deal with.”

He says he is proud that the protests have been peaceful, but there is a streak of frustration: “We’re trying to avoid any type of bloodshed but given the reality of what we are facing, it’s becoming more and more clear with every passing day that at some point, we will have to get physical.”

There is a stage in the front of the building, surrounded by an array of booming loudspeakers.

Giorgi Vashadze, leader of the opposition Unity movement and one of the country’s best-known politicians, is telling his audience to keep strong, insisting that they will win in the end.

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Vashadze is loud and forceful from the stage. When we meet a few minutes later, he is quieter and thoughtful. But ask him about the election, about the state of his country’s democracy, and his eyes light up.

“This is a constitutional coup,” he says. “This is completely against the Georgian constitution, against the will of Georgian people.

“This is a Russian special operation against Georgian national interest, and it’s been conducted by Georgian Dream.

“They call themselves the government of Georgia but from today on, we will not call them ‘the government’ anymore.

“We are fighting against Russian interests here in Georgia. So that is why we need support from our Western partners.”

He stops and fixes my gaze. I suspect that he sees our conversation as a way of getting his message out to some Western politicians.

I ask what kind of action he wants to see taken.

“Sanctions, sanctioning of the individuals who are behaving against the constitution and against the law and all different types of like real actions that they can follow.”

It is a call for somebody, somewhere, to do something. And that is the theme that comes across.

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These people, huddled against the downpour, banging the parliament’s wall, whistling and booing, feel as if they have been cheated.

But they also feel ignored and unseen, desperate for help and fearful of the future. In this relentless rain, it is very hard to feel optimistic.