Kaja Kallas’ mother was only six months old when Soviet soldiers loaded her into a cattle car to deport her to Siberia to a prison camp. She did not see her country, Estonia, again until she was 10 years old.
Today his daughter is Prime Minister of Estonia. And no one is more firmly opposed than Kaja Kallas to any form of appeasement vis-à-vis Vladimir Putin, whom she describes as a terrorist whose war crimes must be tried before international tribunals. Estonia was the first country to congratulate Ukraine for destroying a crucial bridge linking Russia to the annexed region of Crimea on October 8, even though kyiv did not claim responsibility for the strike.
“Ukraine must win this war”, said Kaja Kallas at Telegraph, in Prague, at a European summit where she reiterated that new sanctions should be imposed on Moscow and more arms should be sent to kyiv. No country has sent Ukraine as much military equipment as Estonia, as a percentage of GDP per capita.
This small Baltic nation of 1.3 million people shares a border with Russia and only crossed the Iron Curtain in 1991, the date of its independence. Estonia is also one of the few countries to have sent weapons to kyiv before Putin’s February 24 invasion.
Between Eastern and Western Europe, two visions of things
It is not for nothing that the first woman to become head of government in Estonia, in 2021, who says she admires the intractable Margaret Thatcher, has been nicknamed the new European Iron Lady. She warned Russians fleeing the mobilization that Estonia would reject their asylum requests and she advised them to stay in the country to overthrow the president. She wants the European Union (EU) to ban Russian tourists from entering and for Ukraine to join NATO. It is increasing military investments in Estonia and sending arms to kyiv.
At the first summit of the European Political Community, in Prague on October 6, Kaja Kallas, 45, the head of a family of three children, stood out in a blue dress alongside 43 big European pundits, mostly men. “Russia is terrorizing us into reversing our decisions,” she said of Putin’s threat of nuclear war.
“As far as Putin is concerned, he is obviously a war criminal and he must be tried for the crimes of aggression of which he is guilty.” she said in the magnificent gardens of Prague Castle during a break between two sessions