Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas told CNN that NATO allies must “keep a cool head” in light of Tuesday’s missile incident in Poland that left two people dead.
“I think we really have to keep a cool head, knowing there might be a spillover effect, especially to those countries that are very close [to Ukraine],” Kallas told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour in an interview Wednesday.
“This is up to the Polish government to say how they want to address this,” she said.
On Wednesday, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said that “materials collected by our services and provided by our allies most probably indicate that the explosion in Przewodów, in eastern Poland, was caused by the shooting down and destruction of a Russian missile.” Polish President Andrzej Duda said that the missile was “probably an accident” from Ukraine’s air defenses.
Russia blamed Ukraine’s air defense system for the missile explosion and said there was “a deliberate provocation in order to escalate the situation.”
Estonian leader Kallas told Amanpour that NATO allies should see the bigger picture when it comes to the incident.
“Of course, Russia wants to concentrate on this one incident, but the problem is Russia is waging a full-scale war in Ukraine,” the Estonian prime minister told CNN.
“Yesterday, they did [their] biggest rocket attacks so far, hitting civilian infrastructure, hitting civilians everywhere, trying to make Ukraine really run out of electricity, bombing the electricity grid so it will be dark and very cold. This is the reason we’re talking about this,” Kallas said about Russian missiles striking across the country on Tuesday.
“We must understand that Russia’s aim is to terrorize us, to say that now the war is spilling over the borders, and now we have to stop. Actually, it’s vice versa. The only thing the aggressor understands is strength and we have to show this unity and resolve,” she added.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said Wednesday that one of NATO’s top priorities at the moment is to provide more air defense systems to Ukraine.
Kallas told Amanpour that “air defense, all the equipment that we have, must be given to Ukraine so they can defend themselves.”
“I can’t look into their warehouses, and see what they [NATO members] actually have, but I can call on the leaders of NATO allies who have more, and say ‘please look to your storage, look to your warehouses, find things that you have, do agreements with [the] private sector who is developing equipment,’ so that we can send top equipment to Ukraine and end this war once and for all,” Kallas said.
