Russia knows our weak point

Russia is using mass migration as a weapon to shake up and divide Europe, warns Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas.

– Our opponents know that migration is our weakness, Kallas said in Tallinn on Friday, according to The Guardian.

She describes it as Russia’s goal is to make it too risky for people to stay in Ukraine – for example in the country’s second largest and currently hard-pressed city of Kharkiv – so that they have to flee to the west in large numbers.

This is how Russia has worked for a long time, according to Kallas. She points to the Syrian war, where Russia entered militarily on the side of the Syrian regime when scores of Syrians fled the country in the great migration crisis of 2015-2016. And on Russian involvement in conflicts in Africa, where Kremlin-coordinated forces such as the infamous Wagner have backed various regimes and coup plotters.

– They push migrants across the border, create problems for Europeans and use it as a weapon, because in accordance with human rights you have to receive these people. And that is, of course, grist to the far-right’s mill.

Estonia and the other Baltic states strongly support Ukraine in the Russian war of invasion, and leaders such as Kaja Kallas have repeatedly warned of dire consequences if the EU and allies in the West do not stand up in a united manner.