Prime Minister Kaja Kallas of Estonia in Brussels just after Russia invaded Ukraine in February. Credit: John Thys
TALLINN, Estonia — Kaja Kallas, now 44, grew up in the Soviet Union, which had annexed her country, Estonia, after World War II.
She remembers the Soviet occupation and a visit to East Berlin in 1988, when she was 11, and her father told her to “breathe in the air of freedom” from West Berlin. And she remembers the stories of 1949, when her mother, Kristi, then a baby, was deported to Siberia in a cattle car with her own mother and grandmother and lived in exile there until she was 10 — part of Moscow’s effort to wipe out Estonia’s elite.
So it is perhaps little wonder that Ms. Kallas, now Estonia’s prime minister, has become one of Europe’s toughest voices against Russia for its war in Ukraine. Along with Latvia and Lithuania — countries also annexed by the Soviet Union — her country and its fellow Baltic States are some of the smallest and most vulnerable in Europe.
But their recent history has given them special standing and credibility as they press Europe’s larger countries to take a hard line against President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and to keep faith with Ukraine and its struggle for freedom.
In an interview in Tallinn, Estonia’s capital, Ms. Kallas made it clear that Ukraine’s destiny must be up to Ukrainians to decide. But simply suing for peace with Mr. Putin would be a mistake at this stage, she believes, rewarding his aggression. She argues forcefully instead that Russia must be seen to lose its war against Ukraine, so that history — that of her family and her country — is not repeated elsewhere.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/0...