BBC:
Estonia considers itself a front-line state, a Nato member where its border guards stare across the Narva River at the Russian fortress of Ivangorod.
This tiny Baltic state, once a part of the Soviet Union, is convinced that once the fighting stops in Ukraine, President Vladimir Putin will turn his attention to the Baltics, looking to bring countries like Estonia back under Moscow’s control.
To help stave off that possibility, Estonia’s government has poured money and weapons into Ukraine’s war effort, donating more than 1% of its GDP to Kyiv.
“If every Nato country did this,” says Estonia’s steely Prime Minister Kaja Kallas, “Ukraine would win.”
But Ukraine isn’t winning.
Short of artillery, ammunition, air defences and most of all, troops, Ukraine is struggling to hold back the sheer weight of Russian firepower, glide bombs and massed infantry assaults that often border on the suicidal.
What, I asked Prime Minister Kallas, is Estonia’s Plan B if Ukraine loses this war and Russia’s invasion ultimately succeeds?
“We have no Plan B for a Russian victory,” she replies, “because then we would stop focussing on Plan A” – helping Ukraine push back the Russian invasion.
“We should not give in to pessimism. Victory in Ukraine is not just about territory. If Ukraine joins Nato, even without some territory, then that’s a victory because it will be placed under the Nato umbrella.”
Kaja Kallas is controversial. She is not the first national leader to be more popular outside their country than within.
Born a Soviet citizen, her mother and grandmother were forcibly deported to Siberia.
Now 46 and prime minister since 2021, she is one of the most hawkish leaders in Nato when it comes to blunting the Kremlin’s ambitions in Europe. That has spooked some in the White House that she risks dragging the West into direct conflict with Moscow.
