Russia wants to arrest Estonia’s prime minister, Kaja Kallas, and dozens of other Baltic officials for the removal of monuments to the Soviet Union‘s soldiers in their respective countries.
“These people are responsible for decisions that are actually tantamount to desecration of historical memory,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Tuesday, according to state-run TASS.
Kallas announced last year that Estonian officials would have “Soviet monuments … removed from public spaces,” as the Baltic states — her country, as well as Latvia and Lithuania — emerged as perhaps NATO’s most enthusiastic supporters of Ukraine. All three countries were occupied by the Soviet Union after World War II, and the history of that era “are also a war zone in which imperialism pursues its own goals,” as a targeted senior Lithuanian official put it.
“I’m glad that my work to dismantle the ruins of Sovietization has not gone unnoticed,” Lithuanian Culture Minister Simonas Kairys told local media. “My duty as culture minister is to prevent the achievement of these malicious goals, to prevent the distortion of these themes both in Lithuania and in the international arena.”
Russia’s Interior Ministry unveiled the indictments on the same day that Estonia’s foreign intelligence service released an annual report that forecast Moscow’s aspiration to “achieve military dominance in the Baltic Sea region” through a military buildup designed to prepare for a potential war with NATO.
“The Russian leadership sees the need to return to a mass army concept to continue the conflict in Ukraine and prepare for a possible conflict with NATO,” the Estonian intelligence report assessed. “If Russia manages to implement the reform, NATO could face a Soviet-style mass army in the next decade. … Defending against a possible conventional attack from such an army would require allied defense forces and defense industries to be significantly more prepared, capable, and better-stocked with ammunition and materiel than they currently are.”
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Kallas, the Estonian prime minister, added that there is “nothing surprising” about Russia’s indictment.
“Throughout history, Russia has veiled its repressions behind so-called law enforcement agencies,” she wrote on social media. “The Kremlin now hopes this move will help to silence me and others — but it won’t. The opposite. I will continue my strong support to Ukraine. I will continue to stand for increasing Europe’s defense.”
Kallas is a candidate to replace NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg.
