“I don’t suppose there will be any relations as regular with a pariah state that hasn’t actually given up the imperialistic targets,” she mentioned on the sidelines of a significant safety convention in Munich. “If we don’t be taught this lesson and don’t prosecute the crimes of aggression, the battle crimes will simply proceed.”

She spoke the day after Vice President Kamala Harris mentioned america has decided that Russia has dedicated crimes in opposition to humanity in Ukraine and must be held accountable. “Justice have to be served,” Harris mentioned in her speech to the convention.

The Russian ambassador to Washington, Anatoly Antonov, dismissed the U.S. announcement “as an try to demonize Russia.”

Kallas famous that whereas Nazi crimes have been prosecuted within the Nuremberg trials following World Struggle II, no tribunal was arrange following the Chilly Struggle to prosecute crimes by the Soviet Union, together with mass deportations of Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians through the five-decade-long Soviet occupation.

This time, Russia’s management needs to be held accountable. “There needs to be accountability (earlier than) we are able to speak about our relationships with Russia,” she mentioned.

Requested about China’s requires peace talks and recommendations that Western international locations are prolonging the battle by arming Ukraine, Kallas mentioned that whereas everybody needs peace, a deal that cedes Ukrainian territory to Russia would sign to the world that “aggression pays off.”

Russia’s invasion should come at a “larger value, so that each one the aggressors or would-be aggressors on this planet would make the calculation that it doesn’t repay,” Kallas mentioned.

Kallas, 45, leads Estonia’s center-right Reform Get together and has been prime minister since 2021. Not everybody helps her line on Ukraine. Forward of parliamentary elections in two weeks, opposition chief Martin Helme of the far proper Conservative Individuals’s Get together has referred to as for a extra cautious strategy and accused Kallas of emptying Estonia’s personal arsenals, leaving the nation weak.

Kallas dismissed that suggestion, saying “we after all have given loads however we’re additionally enthusiastic about our personal protection.”

Kallas has figured in hypothesis about potential candidates to switch Jens Stoltenberg as NATO secretary-general when he leaves the publish within the fall. She dismissed that as “not possible,” however famous that the Baltic international locations had not been given any excessive management positions in NATO since they joined in 2005.

“Some have mentioned it will probably’t be from international locations just like the Baltic states as a result of it should provoke Russia,” she mentioned. “To start with, I don’t suppose our relationships with Russia can get any worse than they proper now are as a result of he’s waging a battle in Ukraine. And the second is that you’re really saying that we give energy to (Russian President Vladimir) Putin to resolve who can’t be, for instance, the secretary-general of NATO.”