INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Former Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas faced questions in the European Parliament on Tuesday ahead of her potential confirmation for the
2021 to July 2024, after she took over leadership of the center-right Estonian Reform party in 2018
She previously served as a member of the European Parliament from 2014 to 2018.She emerged as a candidate for the job after becoming a
Seemingly unafraid of escalation risks, Kallas has called on Europe to do more and more to ensure Ukrainian victory.She answered questions
There is a difference between peace and peace
give in to the aggressor and say okay, take what you want, then all the aggressors, or would-be aggressors all across the world get the
said that Europe must resist the Russian narrative that sanctions were ineffective and that it was put forward to foment war-weariness in
She stressed that Europe needed to make tough choices in the short term to support Ukraine which would lead to benefits in the long term.In
response to a pointed question from far-right Bulgarian MEP Petar Volgin, Kallas criticized the Minsk agreements, which sought to end the
conflict after Russia invaded Crimea and eastern Ukraine in 2014, implying that they enabled the 2022 full-scale invasion.Later, the former
However, she praised new EU measures to criminalize sanctions evasion and called for punishing violators
She also noted that the EU needs to engage with countries that help Russia circumvent sanctions
response to another question from Sell, Kallas accused him of repeating the pro-Russia narrative that the Russian economy was strong
She fired back at him that Russia had spiked its interest rate to 21%, that its sovereign wealth fund was shrinking, and that gas revenues
Member states can prevent them from being in their borders, but we have to work in the IMO to really address this issue and put more
every country needed to meet their pledge to spend 2% of GDP on defense spending
She criticized the fact that North Korea was reportedly sending more ammunition to the war in Ukraine than the entire Euro-Atlantic
assetsKallas said that frozen assets belonging to Russia should be used to pay for the reconstruction of Ukraine, calling it unfair to use
decouple the Global South from the West and Western values, Kallas said that she believed multilateral fora were not responsive enough to
She said the EU needed to more coherently and effectively communicate its values and actions in contrast to countries like Russia, China and
noted that Moscow was afraid of the democratic space expanding to Russia and Belarus, and that a democratic government might prevent wars
