Kallas at the meeting with Scholz: Ukraine must win the fight for both freedom and justice

Kaja Kallas emphasised at the meeting that in order to ensure Ukraine's victory and lasting peace, Russia must be defeated in Ukraine and return to its borders. "I belong to a generation that did not have freedom, so I know very well that you must fight for freedom. This is also why we support Ukraine with all our strength. Victory means pushing Russia back to its borders. Victory is the conviction that aggression ends in defeat. The sooner Putin realises that he will not achieve his goals, the sooner this war will end," Kallas said. "Ukraine has proven to the world that they can win the war if the transatlantic family stands firmly by their side," she added.

Kallas thanked Germany for its recent historic €2.7 billion military aid package to Ukraine and said the free world must continue to provide Ukraine with aid in an amount that enables them to win the war. The Prime Minister added that we must continue to work to stop the flow of funds that are used by Russia to feed their war of aggression. It is also necessary to bring all criminals to justice, including the Russian leadership. "Ukraine must win the fight for both freedom and justice. Crimes that go unpunished encourage new crimes. Russia's current leaders have learned from history that their predecessors were never held accountable for the atrocities committed. If Russia is not held accountable, the cycle of violence in Russia will never end," the Estonian Prime Minister said.

According to Kallas, we must eliminate grey areas in European security. This requires a geopolitical European Union and a strong NATO. "For lasting peace in Europe, we need Ukraine in the European Union and in NATO," Kallas emphasised.

The German Chancellor and the Baltic Prime Ministers also discussed the expected results of the NATO Summit in Vilnius. Prime Minister Kallas thanked Chancellor Scholz for Germany's commitment to protect the Baltic region both as a framework nation for the NATO battle group in Lithuania, and for their air policing. At the Vilnius Summit, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania are waiting for the approval of NATO's new defence plans and the necessary military capabilities and resources to implement them.

"We also consider it important that all allies strengthen their defence capabilities. Every NATO member should contribute more than 2% to their defence budget. We also need to find ways and means to support the European defence industry. However, we observe that in 2022, the actual defence spending of European allies decreased by 11.6% compared to 2021," Kallas said. "Estonia takes its commitments as an ally extremely seriously - we are increasing defence spending to 3% of GDP and are constantly reinforcing our national defence. I am pleased to highlight that Estonia and Latvia have just started negotiations with a German manufacturer for a joint procurement of medium-range air defence,"she added.

The intensification of Baltic-German energy cooperation, including in the field of offshore wind energy, was also discussed at the meeting.

Statement by Kaja Kallas at the joint press conference: https://valitsus.ee/en/news/statement-estonian-prime-minister-after-meeting-german-chancellor-and-prime-ministers-latvia

Photos: https://www.flickr.com/photos/stenbockimaja/albums/72177720308593673