Maintaining unity among western allies over Russia’s war on Ukraine is becoming increasingly difficult amid growing concerns about signs of complacency in some countries, Estonia’s Prime Minister has warned.
Kaja Kallas, one of NATO’s top leaders, said in an interview that “we definitely have to worry about” appeasement.
“We’ve been united so far, and it’s been great,” he said. However, he added, “maintaining unity is becoming increasingly difficult, because everyone wants this war to stop and there are questions about what [will] really stop. If some think we will make this one last effort and then draw a line and [not] do anything, this is definitely a concern.
Kallas, who is preparing for national elections on Sunday in a country of 1.3 million people, has become one of the leading voices in Europe on the current security crisis, warning before and after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine last year about the dangers of Moscow’s revanchism. .
Estonia, which was illegally annexed after World War II by the Soviet Union and gained independence in 1991, has been a front line between NATO and Russia since joining the western security alliance in 2004.
In the early stages of the Ukraine war, the three Baltic states – Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania – expressed concern about the willingness of France and Germany to talk to Russian president Vladimir Putin, and worried that he wanted to push Kyiv to negotiate with Moscow. . The Baltic position is that Russia must be defeated and return all the territories taken from Ukraine since 2014, including Crimea.
“Now we have managed to convince France and Germany to see the picture the way we see the picture,” said Kallas. “We must continue to explain what we need to do to disrupt the historical cycle that will attack Russia in one of its neighbors.”
The key to deterring Russia this season is “accountability”, Kallas said: Without holding the Russian leadership responsible for the war, he said, “we will see this happening again and again”.
A western diplomat in Tallinn said that like Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union, Kallas was “loved abroad, but less loved at home”.
However, Kallas’ liberal Reform Party topped opinion polls ahead of Sunday’s election, although the gap with second-placed far-right Ekre has narrowed in recent weeks.
Reform is the largest party in parliament after elections in 2019 but was initially unable to form a government after Ekre allied with the Center party, which historically enjoys strong support from Estonia’s large Russian minority. The coalition collapsed in 2021, bringing Kallas to power.
Ekre acted “like” Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán by saying “we don’t need anyone, we don’t have to help Ukraine, we have to look for self-interest in everything we do”, he said.
Ekre’s previous spell in government was dogged by controversy as party leaders insulted world leaders from US president Joe Biden to Finnish prime minister Sanna Marin.
Kallas accused Ekre of supporting the same narrative as the Kremlin by saying it prefers neutrality to supporting Ukraine or Russia. “Russia’s narrative fits with Ekre’s narrative. If your biggest enemy has the same goals as you, then I think it’s not good for the country,” he said.
Kallas has led calls to prosecute Russian leaders for war crimes and for European countries to get weapons and send them directly to Ukraine.
Responding to warnings from U.S. officials and western intelligence that China could send weapons to Russia even though Beijing considers itself an honest broker in the conflict, he warned: “These two things cannot go together . . . If China wants to be a broker peace and at the same time giving arms to the aggressor, will oppose the possibility of achieving peace and violate the principles of the UN Charter.
There is “clearly one aggressor and one victim in this war”, he added.
The three Baltic states hope that July’s NATO summit in the Lithuanian capital Vilnius will lead to more reinforcements in the region.
Kallas noted that the alliance’s summit in Madrid last year had approved a move from deterrence to a defensive posture, meaning the Baltics would be defended against an immediate Russian attack instead of having to wait for additional weapons and troops to arrive from Europe.
Referring mainly to the need to provide more military equipment in the region, he added: “This is a political decision. What is needed is the execution of the plan. . . so we are ready to defend the country from the first minute.