The war in Ukraine will end when Russia — its people, the military and the elite cadre loyal to President Vladimir Putin — realize it has lost like it did in Afghanistan in the 1980’s, Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas said.
(Bloomberg) — The war in Ukraine will end when Russia — its people, the military and the elite cadre loyal to President Vladimir Putin — realize it has lost like it did in Afghanistan in the 1980’s, Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas said.
The day before the one-year mark of the invasion, she said NATO states should overcome concern that giving Ukraine the support it needs to defeat Russia will escalate the conflict beyond Putin’s red lines. Even a worst-case scenario — a potential nuclear retaliation — will happen in the conflict zone and not on the alliance’s soil, she said in an interview on Thursday.
“When the army realizes that they are sent to the grinder because the West is behind Ukraine and they can’t really win, and the Russian population understands that they can’t really win, then this war ends,” said Kallas. “And that’s why giving military aid — really strong military aid — is of great, great importance.”
Kallas’s calls for other European allies to defend Ukraine have made Estonia, a former Soviet Republic of 1.3 million people, one of Kyiv’s most strident allies. The Baltic state is the leading provider of weapons in relation to the size of its economy.
While bigger European Union and North Atlantic Treaty Organization members had come around to listen to the warnings about Russia’s intentions from nations like Estonia, she said worries persist among some of the larger member states.
Most Powerful Weapons
French President Emmanuel Macron said on Sunday he didn’t think the conflict could be solved by military means, while other countries have balked at sending Ukraine NATO’s most powerful weapons, like long-range missiles that could potentially strike Russia or fighter jets.
Kallas said nobody was talking about attacking Russia on its own territory, but defeating Russia was the only answer, even if Putin continues to brandish a nuclear threat.
“I can’t say that Putin wouldn’t use a nuclear weapon — I can’t say that he’s bluffing,” she said at the government office in the snowy capital, Tallinn. But “if he will use nuclear weapons, it will be on Ukraine, not Germany or France.”
“No NATO country has ever attacked Russia, and nobody’s attacking Russia,” she added.
The 45 year-old Estonian leader, who is campaigning for re-election in a March 5 parliamentary vote, said she was hopeful that an Estonian proposal now being considered by the European Commission to fund as many as 1 million rounds of artillery ammunition for Ukraine may be approved at an EU leader summit next month.
As the bloc prepares to approve a 10th round of sanctions targeting Putin’s war machine, more must be done now to crack down on entities that are trying to skirt the penalties by continuing to do business with Russia by closing loopholes, she said.
Kallas also addressed Putin’s State of the Nation speech on Wednesday, when he said Moscow would achieve its goals in Ukraine and justified the invasion by saying Russia was defending itself in a war with the West.
“He wants to be in the fight with the West because then he can explain this to his own people,” she said. “Otherwise, the people would ask that, why did we need this war?”
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