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Estonian PM Kaja Kallas called for Russians who’ve committed war crimes to be held accountable.
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“We still know about only a fraction of the atrocities that Russian troops have committed,” Kallas wrote in a new op-ed.
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The world can’t let Putin “get away with it,” Kallas said.
Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas in a new op-ed offered an impassioned call for Russia to be brought to justice over apparent war crimes committed in Ukraine.
“I am writing this essay as the world has woken up to the horrific scenes from Irpin and Bucha, suburbs of Kyiv in Ukraine. We see pictures of mass graves and civilians murdered by Russian troops,” Kallas wrote in The Economist, adding, “Russia has engineered humanitarian catastrophes in cities such as Mariupol. Targeting civilians is a war crime according to international law. Ukraine is not a battlefield; it’s a crime scene.”
Kallas said Russia was deliberately placing civilians at the frontline, and it’s not an accident that millions of Ukrainians have fled the country in a desperate search for safety.
“We still know about only a fraction of the atrocities that Russian troops have committed; the true scale of the Kremlin’s brutality is yet to be seen,” Kallas warned.
Ukraine’s top diplomat, Dmytro Kuleba, expressed similar sentiments during a press conference in Warsaw, Poland, on Monday. “The horrors that we’ve seen in Bucha are just the tip of the iceberg of all the crimes that have been committed by Russian army in the territory of Ukraine so far,” Kuleba said.
Kallas said thousands are dying in Ukraine because of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “imperialist ambition.”
“By now it has become abundantly clear that although the Soviet Union collapsed, its imperialist ideology never did,” the Estonian leader added. She said that the world has let Putin get away with aggressive acts in the past, but “can’t let him get away with it again now.”
“Were that to happen, his appetite would only grow, and more atrocities and more human suffering would follow,” she added.
Kallas said the Ukraine war has made it “crystal-clear” why so many countries that were formerly part of the Soviet Union, including Estonia, rushed to join NATO since the end of the Cold War. In the lead-up to Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine in late February, the Kremlin often blamed NATO for tensions between Moscow and the West. But Kallas threw cold water on the notion that NATO was at all to blame for Russia’s actions.
“The alliance doesn’t exist to threaten Russia: it is for defense. It exists to keep tens of millions from being enslaved and slaughtered by dictators,” she said.
The Ukraine war has led to an “era-defining moment,” Kallas said, and the decisions made in the days to come will “stick with us for decades.” Moving forward, the Estonian prime minister said that military aid to Ukraine needs to be the “top priority,” including assistance that can help Ukrainian forces liberate cities and “better protect their skies.”
She also said the Kremlin’s “war machine” must be disarmed financially, calling for the world to “dry up” Russia’s revenues from hydrocarbons or fossil fuels. Russia provides a huge portion of the EU’s oil and gas, but there have been growing calls for the bloc to cut this off to deprive Moscow of revenue as the war continues. The US has banned Russian energy imports as a result of the war.
In addition to these steps, Kallas called for NATO’s presence in the Baltics to be increased in order to send a clear message to Russia. Estonia, which borders Russia, and other NATO countries like Poland have expressed concerns that Moscow could expand the war beyond Ukraine.
“We should be doing everything to make sure that no country will be next. If our strength fails us now, then the question will become whether NATO is next,” Kallas said.
“Ukraine is not the victim of a one-time miscalculation by a madman,” she added. “We are witnessing a long-planned campaign by the Kremlin to exert control over neighbouring countries by brute force, no matter the human cost.”
Read the original article on Business Insider
