Prime Minister (center right) since 2021, the winner of the Europe Prize awarded by L’Express has become known for her constant support for Ukraine. The Baltic Republic also devotes 1.28% of its national budget to direct aid to this country, which places it in third position in the world, after Norway and Lithuania. Neighboring Russia, Estonia was itself occupied by the Soviet Union for fifty years, until 1991. The Prime Minister’s own mother was also deported to Siberia with her family by Stalin in 1949 when she was just a baby.
The Express: The Hamas terrorist raid on October 7the mass kidnapping and, more generally, the crisis in the Middle East benefit Vladimir Putin?
Kaja Kallas: Of course. It is in his interest that the attention of world public opinion shifts away from Ukraine. Russia benefits from global disorder. Putin is betting that we will tire of the Ukrainian conflict. He believes he is more enduring than us, hopes to break our unity and fragment Europe. We are not going to give him this pleasure. We will stay focused on this war [en Ukraine] and signal to Putin that we are far from being overcome by weariness. Our analysis is consistent with the formula of historian Timothy Snyder [NDLR : auteur de Terres de sang, Gallimard, 2012] : “To become better, a country must lose its last colonial war.” As long as Russians associate the word “war” with the notions of glory and conquest, they will not be able to escape the cycle of violence in which they are trapped.
However, the risk of weariness among Westerners is very real.
In a democracy, there is always a risk. Our countries must deal with their public opinions. But in recent years, we have learned to manage multiple crises simultaneously: those of Covid-19, energy, inflation, war… We have become agile. Of course, in a democracy, electoral cycles are often periods of turbulence. This is the case in the United States with the absence of a “speaker” in the House of Representatives.
But Joe Biden has shown remarkable consistency in his support for Ukraine. And Volodymyr Zelensky himself says that the result of the 2024 American presidential election does not worry him. For my part, I have contacts with American Democrats and Republicans: both camps support Ukraine. What Vladimir Putin fears above all is democracy itself. He wants to demonstrate that this system does not work. This is why it is waging a conventional war and a shadow war – in the areas of information, cyber, political influence – to destabilize democratic societies.
What does Ukraine need most?
On the military level: more ammunition. On the political level: constant pressure on Russia. Furthermore, a specific danger exists in the information sphere: the Telegram channel [NDLR : créée en Russie en 2013] operates without a legal framework and spreads fake news anything goes. It’s harmful. We have to find a way to counter this.
The reduction in ammunition stocks apparently concerns both belligerents. Where is your European initiative for the production of one million shells launched in March?
Things are improving but there is still room for improvement. In 1998, NATO set a target of 2% of GDP for defense budgets for its member countries. Some countries are not there yet. Arms manufacturers tell us that their order books are not full enough. However, shell production tends to increase. We still need to accelerate the movement. For this, each European country must fulfill its share, as Estonia and a few other countries have done.
Russia has doubled or tripled its production. We must do the same. Especially since, it seems, North Korea is now supplying ammunition to Putin’s army.
The end of the conflict does not seem to be imminent…
It will stop when Russia realizes that it has made a mistake. In order to accelerate this awareness, we must act on two levers: the army and the economic elite. The Prigozhin mutiny in June revealed the discontent of the troops whose morale was at half mast and their equipment was failing. The cracks are there, they must be exploited. The other lever is the frozen assets of Russian oligarchs. A few days ago, our government sent a draft law to the Estonian parliament that allows these assets to be seized and used. This could serve as a model for broader action. This is above all a legal question. Knowing that the International Court of Justice in The Hague [aux Pays-Bas] keeps the register of frozen assets and, at the same time, records the amount of destruction committed by Russia, a legal means must be found to release this fund to compensate Ukraine. In law, it is possible to argue that it is up to the oligarchs to turn against the Russian state to recover their money to the extent that the fault lies with Russia.
In other words, Ukraine and the Russian oligarchs have a common adversary: the Kremlin, which harms them. It is essential to hit the wallets of the members of this elite. It is through this type of concrete action, which directly impacts individuals, that we can open their eyes. One of the most effective measures so far has been to ban Russian-registered vehicles from crossing the borders of the Baltics and Poland. This concretely complicates the lives of Putin’s compatriots. We must take sanctions that personally affect the wealthiest, otherwise they will put up with the war in Ukraine and continue to have a good time abroad, including on the French Riviera.
In Poland, the pro-European liberal opposition has just won an electoral victory over the outgoing, ultra-conservative and illiberal government. Your reaction ?
With this election where participation broke records, democracy won. Going against the prevailing discourse according to which citizens would no longer have a say, the Poles made theirs heard. And Donald Tusk’s camp won. It remains to be seen how the transition will take place and how the new coalition will be put in place. But one thing is certain: Poland has just delivered a very positive message to the democratic world.
In the next ten years, the European Union could increase from 27 to 35 members, including the Balkan countries and Ukraine. Do you fear such an enlargement?
Absolutely not. Estonia (1.3 million inhabitants) is a good example of the benefits of enlarged Europe. In 2000, the average income of Estonians was 36% of that of Europeans. In 2004 – the year we joined the EU – it was 48%. Today, it’s 87%. So, convergence works! Brussels helps European countries and regions to modernize, which helps stabilize the continent, increase the internal market and make the continent prosper. Estonia was a low-income country; Today we are a nation at the forefront of digital transformation.
Our strategy is simple: we invest in research, development, innovation and technology. Today, Estonia is the country in the world with the largest number of “unicorns” [NDLR : start-up valorisée à plus d’un milliard de dollars] per inhabitant. When you are small like Estonia, you have to be agile. In the animal kingdom, it is not the big one that devours the small one, it is the faster one that overtakes the slower one.