EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas has warned that Russia is seeking to intimidate Europe into reducing support for Ukraine, arguing that yielding to such pressure would encourage further aggression. Drawing on her family’s experience of Soviet repression in Estonia, she says European countries must remain united and strengthen their defence and deterrence.

Kallas’s mother was deported to Siberia as an infant in 1949, while her grandfather was sent to a prison camp; the family returned to Estonia in 1959. Kallas, born in Tallinn in 1977, lived under Soviet rule until Estonia regained independence in 1991, and later became Estonia’s prime minister before taking her EU post in 2024. Her comments come amid Russian aircraft and drone incursions, suspected sabotage and other hybrid activity, although Estonian officials say they see no evidence that Russia is preparing a full-scale attack on NATO.