In an interview with LCI, of which journalist Darius Rochebin is publishing a short preview extract this Thursday on X, Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas returned to the wanted notice issued against her by the Russian authorities.
“By ordering my arrest, Vladimir Putin wants to show that he does not really consider Estonia a country, but a part of the Russian empire
,” declared the head of the Estonian government.
Since February 13, Russia has issued wanted notices against three officials from the Baltic countries.
A notice visible on the website of the Russian Interior Ministry mentions that the Estonian Prime Minister, the Estonian Secretary of State Taimar Peterkop and the Lithuanian Minister of Culture Simonas Kairys are all three being prosecuted in Russia in “
a criminal case”.
Without
specifying what crime or misdemeanor it is, they are accused of “
hostile actions against historical memory”.
In the brief video extract from the interview on LCI, which has not yet been broadcast on the French channel, Kaja Kallas takes this wanted notice with an apparent distance, recalling that “
the rules which apply in Russia are not not valid in Estonia
.
As the European elections approach, the head of government interprets the Russian authorities' relentlessness against her as an attempt to undermine her candidacy.
“They say that I am a provocation for Russia,”
she notes.
In his post on X, journalist Darius Rochebin indicates that Kaja Kallas also thanked, during the interview, President Emmanuel Macron for his support.
At the end of a meeting at the Élysée of around twenty Western leaders on Monday, the French head of state said he was in favor of a second large European loan to finance purchases of ammunition and weapons for Ukraine, a proposal that Kaja Kallas has been carrying since December.