This article was first published in the May 2022 issue of the journal The New Stateman. We thank the system for the authority to publish it.
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“Take a deep breath,” Sim Callas told his daughter on a clear day in 1998. “It’s the air of freedom that comes from the other side.” Kaya Callas was 11. The trip to East Berlin from her homeland Estonia, then still under occupation as part of the USSR, was a big story. In the photo taken during the trip, the young Kaya is seen standing in front of the gate with her brother and mother, holding a purple handbag and looking resolutely at the camera. Little Estonia on the path to independence and democracy.
“At that time I did not really understand what my father meant, because we never experienced real freedom,” Callas says in Tallinn, as the Baltic Sea glows through the window of her office in a tall building in the old part of the capital. Today, as Prime Minister of Estonia, Callas is proving to be one of the most determined voices in the EU calling for an uncompromising response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. In retrospect, it is almost impossible to detach recent national developments from the crucial events that took place in her early life.
“I’m part of the lucky generation,” she says. “We lived in a prison. No freedom, no choice. Nothing. Then in 1991, when I was a girl, we got back our freedom and our independence.” All this was in contrast to a generation of grandparents, who she said “had it all” in free Estonia, and lost everything when the country was occupied by the Soviets in 1940.
The clear understanding of its principles and importance and of historical turning points and their significance, is the best explanation for Callas’ growing international influence. Based on her and her country’s past, it stands out for the level of support its government provides to Ukraine (the highest per capita support rate in the world). Beginning in the early days of the war, Callas asserted emphatically and unreservedly that the victory of the West and its values would be possible only through willpower to withstand Putin’s invasion and defend Ukraine.
Estonians are not people who practice self-boasting. Their country is a land of grumbling, sandwiched between the Baltic Sea and Russia on the northeastern border of NATO and the European Union, and speaks a different language from most European languages. They are usually restrained and quiet, like their Finnish neighbors. In the old town of Tallinn.I wondered for a moment if I had got the correct address, before noticing a memorial plaque dedicated to members of the independent Estonian government between the world wars, executed by the Soviets.The courtyard beyond the gate leads into an 18th century house standing on a hill overlooking the north. She greets me and walks into the room with outstretched hands. During the interview, the Estonian Prime Minister speaks modestly combined with a slight irony. When she sees the notes I made in dense handwriting she asks with a smile: “Can you really read that?”.
During our conversation I ask Callas what the meaning of a Ukrainian defeat will be. She responds by defining the opposite situation: “The victory will mean that Russia will return to Russia’s borders. Russian forces will withdraw and return home.” Loss, she continues, is more difficult to define and its meaning will depend on the Ukrainians themselves. After a few weeks in Berlin, where the German establishment has passed the time around petty debates over whether Russia went to war with no choice and whether Ukraine is doing enough for “peace”, clear and present things like the ones she heard in Callas’ ears were a refreshing breeze.
It practically rejects the idea that the end of the conflict should be sought at all costs. “I think everyone should understand that peace is not a supreme goal if it means a reward for the aggressor who understands that aggression pays off,” she says. “When you say ‘okay, let’s make peace and each side will stay in place now,’ it means that Russia has still snatched a large chunk of sovereign Ukraine. That is, in peace of this kind, Russian aggression pays off.” If that happens, she adds, it will only be a matter of time before Putin acts again: “If Russia is not punished for its actions, there will be a pause of a year or two and then everything will continue: the atrocities, the human suffering, everything.” And not only Ukraine will be in danger in front of a strengthened Putin but also “other countries around Russia. Moldova for example… the imperialist dream never died”. There is no doubt that Estonia will also be a primary target in such a situation.
Callas was born in Estonia under Soviet occupation in 1977, to a family who experienced in their lives the reality of the “Russian imperialist dream.” In 1949 her mother Christie (then six months old), her grandmother and her grandmother’s mother were all sent to Siberia as part of the great deportation ordered by Stalin of Baltic citizens who were marked as “anti-Soviets.” In a speech to the European Parliament on March 9, Callas recounted how “a stranger gave my grandmother a milk jug that kept my mother alive during the same trip. They are still not allowed to be told when the family was finally allowed to return to Estonia. “
Her father, Sim Callas, who encouraged her to aspire to free air in Berlin in 1988, played a key role in Estonia’s transition to a free economic and democratic political system, serving as president of the National Bank in the 1990s, as prime minister from 2002 to 2003, and later becoming To a member of the European Commission.
Kaya Callas studied law and economics and worked as a lawyer, before being elected to the European Parliament in 2014 as the representative of the Liberal Reform Party. There it soon became a prominent voice on regulatory and technology issues, as well as on the issue of EU-Ukraine relations. She returned to Tallinn to win a bid for the party leadership in April 2018, becoming the first woman to serve as Estonian Prime Minister in January 2021, leading a coalition with the center-left EK party.
When Putin began gathering forces on the Ukrainian border late that year, many European countries tried to pull the plug. On the other hand, the Estonian government sent offensive weapons to Ukraine as early as December 2021, less than a year after Callas entered the Prime Minister’s Office. “Our problems today will be the problems of our neighbors tomorrow,” she tells me. “So if the house next to you goes up in flames, it’s best to help a neighbor put out the fire before it reaches your house.”
With the outbreak of the Russian invasion on February 24, Kalas and her government members felt bitter about knowing they were right. Like others, she found herself in a new world, but unlike others – it was a world she knew and knew how to navigate. Estonia has accelerated arms shipments to Ukraine, including Javelin anti-tank missiles and D-30 Hobitzer artillery. As of mid-April, Germany had transferred aid to Ukraine at a rate of 0.01% of German GDP. Figures in the UK and US were close to 0.05% while Poland contributed slightly less than 0.2%. Under Callas, Estonia assisted its neighbor at 0.8% of its GDP. This was accompanied by a determined international campaign that included a speech in the European Parliament two weeks after the invasion began. In the future we will talk in terms of ‘before the invasion’ and ‘after the invasion’ “.
Callas has since become a kind of new ‘Iron Woman’ for today’s Europe, setting the standard for a determined and serious response to Putin’s criminal attack. In late April she delivered a diplomatic but honest speech to the German establishment in Berlin. During the months of March and April, it was quoted more than 10,000 times in the international media, a huge number for a country whose population numbers as many people as a medium-sized British city.
“Estonian Prime Minister Kaya Callas is one of the brightest and bravest leaders in the world today. We need more women like her in leadership positions,” he said. story Ukrainian journalist Olga Tokryuk on April 29. Historian Timothy Gerton Ash recently mentioned her, along with the prime ministers of Spain and the Netherlands (two countries much larger than Estonia), as one of the key players who could lead the EU to a new and more dynamic future.
“Don’t you feel tempted to say ‘I told you so’?” I asked her, thinking of all the years the Estonians had warned Europe that Russia had never abandoned its old impulses. “That would be a rude thing to say, so no,” Callas replies. “But I think there are things that do not have to be said out loud.” I recall this answer when, later in our conversation, she refers to “countries that enjoy much better neighbors than our own,” and says, “they do not feel it the way we feel it.” This is another polite way of implying that some countries in the West were much slower than Estonia in adapting to times of ‘post-invasion’.
And Callas has no illusions as to why the country has found itself in such a position of influence. “I have a feeling that today we are being listened to more than in the past. All these years we have said [למערב] Because Russia’s imperialist dream is still alive. And especially in the 1990s we were told: ‘Why do you need NATO? Why do you want to join the EU? Russia no longer threatens you’. But we know the neighbors well, and those were very smart decisions we made at the time. So today I I feel that we are listened to more because we know what we are talking about. “
The Estonians may be humble and quiet people, but they are no less tough. Living in a small country close to a power like Russia and under many years of occupation and foreign control makes you such. When I ask Callas why she thinks Estonia has done much more for Ukraine than many European countries, she offers a humble and typical answer.
First, it says that every democratic government must respond to its voters, and ‘for us [באסטוניה] There is a very high level of support for the defense of Ukraine. “I got a taste of this when I returned through the narrow streets of Tallinn and passed the Russian embassy, in front of which stood a spectacular display of flags and banners in support of Ukraine.
And secondly, Estonia can act quickly precisely because of its dimensions: “We are a small country, while in some large countries the discussions take longer.” In any case, Callas expresses optimism about the hope that others in Europe are generally on the right path: “When I sit at the negotiating table with other European leaders, I think their moral compass shows the right direction. So even if it takes longer, the direction is one.” .
In my impression, it is the combination of the sober, relaxed and direct Estonian style and the poignant historical experience, that makes Callas such an effective leader. She speaks in dramatic terms of ‘blood and thunder’ (at a moment in European history where no less is required), but does so in a tone that gives the listener the feeling that it is not just an attempt to make an impression.
Here’s my message I sent for global telethon #SaveUkraine – #StopWar:
We must keep supporting Ukraine. The people of Ukraine haven’t tired. Neither can the rest of us.
We must act fast as Ukraine does not have the time.
Ukraine must win and the aggressor must be pushed back. pic.twitter.com/Lu522GvGFH
– Kaja Kallas (@kajakallas) June 1, 2022
Towards the end of the meeting between us, I wonder what the future holds. Callas will be part of an important summit of NATO leaders to be held in Madrid in June. What needs to happen there? “We need the deterrent position to become a defensive position,” she says. United States in case of such an attack. “Such a process requires a military presence on the scale of at least one NATO force in each Baltic country (a significant increase from the existing forces there today, mainly British forces in Estonia), broader cooperation in intelligence matters and a shift from airspace to air defense.” “Unlike today’s situation where we just tell others ‘you can not fly here’, air defense means that if someone enters our space we have the right to intercept it.”
Callas concludes with a warning to Western readers. In a quote from the book by historian Timothy Snyder, The Road to Unfreedom, She attributes to Putin the notion that “if Russia cannot become Western, then the West must become Russia.” In other words: the West must become an authoritarian and conspiratorial nightmare. According to her, the Kremlin will continue to try to undermine Western unity by using cyber threats and promoting myths about the “morally corrupt” and “anti-family” liberal society. She says that “although we are now focused on the conventional war taking place in Ukraine, the hybrid threats are always there. It will be increasingly difficult to maintain unity, but nevertheless I am pleasantly surprised that we have managed to maintain it so far. Together we are much stronger.”
Deep breath. Freedom has been carried in the air in Ukraine in recent years, and has permeated a democratic (though imperfect) state which, like Estonia, is still struggling to escape the grip of the Russian Empire. On February 24, Vladimir Putin sent his life to stop the winds of change. In doing so, he put Western leaders to the test – a test of their ability to deal with a major and fundamental crisis.
For many of us, the invasion event is so vast that we can adapt it to a normal way of thinking, and it is much easier to focus on the immediate and tactical. But in the case of a few others, he has discovered leaders capable of thinking, acting, and speaking on the broad scale required of the moment. Kaya Callas is one of them. It heads a small country, but its message is international: the crisis of Ukraine is the crisis of the whole of Europe and the whole of the West. And with this message, conveyed calmly but also forcefully, Callas manages to change the geopolitical climate on the continent.
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