Kaja Kallas: the Russia-defying Estonian PM poised to lead EU foreign policy

Kaja Kallas will be giving up a lot to return to Europe to succeed Josep Borrell as the EU’s foreign policy chief.

Her 18th-century offices at the top of the picturesque old town in Tallinn marry elegance with efficiency, with the neoclassical cabinet chamber capable of projecting business papers on to the wall. Outside there is a balcony on the edge of Toompea hill where Kallas sometimes sits, with glorious views over the town and the Gulf of Finland.

But for the last year Kallas has appeared destined to leave the hothouse of Estonian politics, and on Thursday she was approved by EU leaders as the bloc’s next high representative for foreign policy.

One of Kallas’s great strengths is the clarity of her values and the apparent absence of doubt with which she translates them into policies. She knows what she thinks and she knows how to say it, and can do so fluently in many languages, including French, English, Finnish, Russian and, of course, Estonian. It is what has made her the first European leader to be put on a Russian wanted list. Not surprisingly, her appointment, a clear statement to Russia, will be seen as a risk by some, especially at a time of discord over Ukraine.

The role of high representative is not just about advocacy but healing mediation within the EU, and in this context some argue Kallas’s formidable certitude could become a problem. “In some situations it is admirable to have somebody that leads from the front, and can be the uncompromising outrider, but the high rep is that – a representative,” one western diplomat said.

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High representatives are supposed to meld the conflicting voices of 27 countries into one unifying position, even if that can be fraught and frustrating – as Borrell has found in his clear desire to be more critical of Israel’s war in Gaza.

But her defenders say Kallas, a child of coalition politics, is more subtle than her reputation as a hammer of Moscow suggests. She is aware that different histories and geographies drive different countries’ views. She may not be as academic as Borrell, who is in his element in an international relations seminar room, but is a voracious reader of history, counting the professors Timothy Snyder and Timothy Garton Ash as friends.

Ukraine may be Europe’s pre-eminent challenge, as the Baltic states know only too well. But Kallas knows she will need to be a 360-degree diplomat able to converse about the Middle East, China, Latin America and Africa. Recently, at a Ukraine peace summit, she argued that Estonia, as a country that had been a victim of colonial oppression, understood some of the global south’s motivations.

Coming from a small country with a population of 1.4 million, she says she is instinctively primed to hear all voices around the table. She has not been an advocate of majority voting in EU foreign policy, a switch that might ease the need to accommodate Hungary’s views on Russia, but would, critics say, leave the big countries too dominant. Estonia, having fought hard for its freedom from the Soviet Union and for its voice to be respected in Brussels, has no desire to hand power to European behemoths, she argues.

The leader of Estonia’s Reform party since 2018, Kallas was an MP from 2011 to 2014 before being elected to the European parliament, where she specialised in technology and competition law. She returned to the Estonian parliament as Reform’s first female leader before being elected prime minister in 2021.

Kallas admits her family history shapes her view of Russia, as it does for many Estonians. During the Soviet June deportation of 1941, Kallas’s mother, Kirsti, aged six months, was deported to Siberia with her mother and grandmother. They were allowed to return to Estonia only 10 years later. Her mother would go on to marry Siim Kallas, who served as Estonian prime minister from 2002 to 2003 and as a European commissioner for a decade to 2014.

Kallas was in office for little more than a year when Vladimir Putin launched his full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. The war has gone on to dominate her time in office and has been the making of her global reputation.

When others such as Emmanuel Macron argued there was a chance to deter Putin from launching his assault on Kyiv, Kallas, influenced by her reading of history, was convinced that dissuasion was futile. Ever since, along with her fellow Baltic leaders, Poland and the UK, she has argued forcefully that Ukraine does not just need support for as long as it takes, but with whatever it takes.

Her argument is that Russia is a revanchist imperial power and to listen to Moscow’s threats, she insists, is to give into the fear. She favours ending sanctions loopholes, more arms, war crimes tribunals, the seizure of Russian assets, banning Russian tourists from the EU: the whole package. Recently she has expanded her concept of the Russian threat to include the use of other disruptive methods including migration, disinformation and sabotage.

Above all she warns of the consequences of a loss of European will. “Achieving peace or a ceasefire on Russia’s terms does not mean the suffering will stop. Worse, Putin will always want more and no country in Europe will then be safe,” she told the Guardian in a recent interview.

Kallas is not just a rhetorician; she comes up with practical ideas including common debt to persuade arms manufacturers to build factories.

But her clearheadedness – or dogmatism, depending on how you see it – has come at a price. Kallas is the first to admit she is more popular internationally than at home, and her decision to raise taxes to increase defence spending, anathema to a liberal party, has been a form of political suicide domestically. She can laugh at herself, and she may need much of that gallows humour in the years ahead.