Estonia’s Kallas in turmoil after resignations over military budget

Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas has been involved in controversy after a senior Defence Ministry official resigned in protest at the Estonian government's inaction on the arms budget, which Kallas claims to have found out about through the press.

Following disappointing results in the European elections, in which Kallas’ Reform Party (Renew) came third, the Estonian prime minister is once again facing calls to step down from the opposition over a defence affair that has rocked local politics in recent days.

The Defence Ministry's Permanent Secretary, Kusti Salm, resigned on Wednesday, citing the government's failure to address the country's need to spend at least €1.6 billion more on ammunition to overcome a "critical" shortage.

Salm said that he and the outgoing head of the Defence Forces, General Martin Herem, had repeatedly proposed to the government to increase ammunition stocks, but to no avail.

At a government press conference on Thursday, Kallas commented that neither she nor the government deserved such accusations.

"We have read this in the press. We have asked both Kusti Salm and Martin Herem about what we have read in the press, and the finance minister has sat down and made a plan," the prime minister said.

"These accusations are exaggerated, and I don't understand why they are being made. We haven't been able to have a debate to ask the same questions," Kallas added.

But Urmas Reinsalu, leader of the opposition Isamaa party (EPP), accused Kallas of lying at a government press conference and called for her resignation.

"The truth is that this was already discussed within the government a year ago when the military advice of the head of the Estonian Defence Forces was deliberately rejected by the government," Reinsalu said.

"An honest official has resigned to warn us. In response to the government's inaction for a year, the minister lied that she read about Salm's concerns in a newspaper," Reinsalu stressed.

"The prime minister should resign,” he concluded.

Kallas's popularity has plummeted due to budget cuts in the public sector and a widespread feeling among the population that she is more focused on a possible future position in NATO or the EU than on domestic policy.

Meanwhile, Kallas' name has been among the most discussed to replace Spain's Josep Borrell at the helm of the European External Action Service (EEAS), backed by French President Emanuel Macron, Politico reported on Saturday.

However, the prime minister told Estonian broadcaster ETV that journalists were speculating about Macron's support.

Tense context

Tensions over the arms budget come at a bad time for the Estonian prime minister, as the region is witnessing a resurgence of border tensions with Russia, which stepped up its territorial provocations at the end of May.

Back then, the Russian Defence Ministry published on its website for a few hours a proposal to revise Russia's maritime border with Finland and Lithuania in the Baltic Sea. In the same week, Estonia dealt with a border incident with Russia in which Moscow removed buoys marking their common border on the river Narva.

Estonian Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna told AFP that Russia was clearly provoking the situation, "pushing the limits and also playing with our fears" of tensions escalating into open conflict.

According to Salm, it is precisely in this context that Estonia is not doing enough to defend itself.

"Today, Russia is developing its war machine faster than Estonia and its allies can keep up,” he told Estonian broadcaster ERR.

“In my opinion, in the short term, we need political decisions with a long-term impact on security, particularly a €1.6 billion investment to address the critical shortage of ammunition," Salm said.

However, Salm told the Estonian newspaper Postimees that there is no direct military threat today, as the troops stationed across Estonia's border are fighting in Ukraine.

"But should the war in Ukraine end, or should Russia decide to move these units back east to Estonia and Latvia, this will not necessarily be the case," he said, adding that there were a number of worrying similarities with the pre-World War II period in 1939.

(Charles Szumski | Euractiv.com)