Russia should be held accountable for crimes in Ukraine, if it seeks normal relations with West – Estonian PM

Kaja Kallas, the Estonian Prime Minister, insists that after the end of the war in Ukraine, Russia must be held accountable for war crimes and its decision to invade a neighbouring country if it is to have any chance of developing normal relations with the West.

Source: She stated this in an interview with AP on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference on Saturday, 18 February, reports European Pravda. 

"I don’t think there can be any relations as usual with a pariah state that hasn’t really given up the imperialistic goals," she said on the sidelines of a major security conference in Munich. "If we don’t learn this lesson and don’t prosecute the crimes of aggression, the war crimes will just continue," Kallas believes.

The Estonian Prime Minister noted that while the Nuremberg Tribunal was organised for Nazi crimes after the Second World War, no tribunal was established after the Cold War to investigate the crimes of the Soviet Union — in particular, the mass deportation of Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians during the fifty-year Soviet occupation.

"There has to be accountability [before – ed.] we can talk about our relations with Russia," Kallas emphasised.

Asked about China’s calls for peace talks and suggestions that Western countries are prolonging the war by arming Ukraine, Kallas said that while everyone wants peace, a deal that cedes Ukrainian territory to Russia would signal to the world that "aggression pays off." 

Therefore, the Prime Minister of Estonia believes, Russia's invasion should cost them a "higher price, so that all the aggressors or would-be aggressors in the world would make the calculation that it doesn’t pay off".

The day before, US Vice President Kamala Harris, who participated in the Munich Security Conference, directly stated that Russia committed crimes against humanity during the war in Ukraine. She cited murders, torture, rape and deportation as examples, and promised that the US would "continue to support the legal process" to bring Russia to justice.

Ukraine, together with its allies and partners, developed three models for the establishment and work of a special tribunal regarding the crime of Russian aggression.

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