The Guardian reports:

Estonia’s prime minister, Kaja Kallas, has called for talks on a new government after her ruling coalition fell apart, urging unity because of security concerns over neighbouring Russia.

Kallas spoke to reporters after President Alar Karis accepted her request to dismiss seven Centre party ministers from the 15-strong cabinet, including the foreign minister, Eva-Maria Liimets.

“More than ever, Estonia needs a functioning government based on common values,” Kallas said on Friday, according to the Baltic news agency. “The security situation in Europe does not give me any opportunity as prime minister to continue cooperation with the Centre party.” [Continue reading…]

Last month, Jeremy Cliffe wrote:

[A]s prime minister of Estonia, Kallas has emerged as the EU’s most robust voice for an uncompromising response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. It is virtually impossible to separate that development from the momentous events of her own early life.

“I am of the lucky generation,” she says. “We were living in a prison, with no freedom, no choices, nothing. And in 1991, when I was a teenager, we got our independence and freedom back.” She contrasts this with her grand-parents’ generation, which as she puts it “had everything” in an independent Estonia and lost it all when the Soviet Union occupied the country in 1940.

This clear sense of the principles that matter most – and of turning points in history and what they mean – is the best explanation for Kallas’s growing international profile and influence. Drawing on her past and that of her country, she has stood out for the level of support her government has provided to Ukraine (the highest per capita of any country in the world). From the war’s earliest days, she has also argued forcefully and without reservation that Vladimir Putin’s invasion must be defeated, Ukraine must win and the West will only hold the line by countering Russia’s attack with a corresponding will to defend Ukraine, itself and its values.

Estonians do not tend to boast. Theirs is a small country, pressed up against the Baltic Sea and Russia, the north-eastern limit of Nato and the EU in eastern Europe, with a language very different from most other European ones. They are reserved and restrained, like their Finnish cousins. Arriving at the prime ministerial office, at an unassuming door on an old gatehouse in the curving Rahukohtu Street in Tallinn’s old town, I briefly wondered whether I had the right address, before noting the plaque dedicated to the members of Estonia’s independent interwar government killed by the Soviets. A courtyard behind the door leads into Stenbock House, an 18th-century courthouse perched on a northern ledge of Tallinn’s Toompea Hill. Kallas greets me, striding into the room with her arm outstretched. In our interview, Estonia’s prime minister is unassuming, unaffected and wry. She gently ribs me for my scruffy handwriting as I jot down notes: “Can you really read that?”

During our discussion I ask Kallas what it would mean if Ukraine were defeated. She replies by defining not defeat, but its opposite: “Victory would mean that Russia goes back to where the borders of Russia are. So they go back and withdraw.” Defeat, she continues, is harder to define and its meaning is ultimately up to Ukraine. Coming from Berlin, where the German establishment has spent recent weeks lost in petty debates about diplomatic protocol and hand-wringing about whether Russia was provoked and whether Ukraine is doing enough for “peace”, I find the force, frankness and moral clarity of her arguments immediately appealing. [Continue reading…]