Kallas at the European Political Community Summit at Blenheim Palace: European unity is key to supporting Ukraine

Last week, Prime Minister Kaja Kallas attended the European Political Community Summit in the United Kingdom, where heads of state and government shared ideas on how to tackle common challenges and strengthen cooperation. According to Kallas, close interaction between leaders will enhance European unity, which is clearly reflected in strong support for Ukraine.

“Close cooperation with allies and partners is particularly important at a time when Russia and some other hostile states are trying to influence our societies through hybrid activities,” the prime minister said. “The aim is to artificially inflame domestic tensions by sowing fear among the people. The free world needs to react together to ensure that criminal intervention measures have effective consequences for the adversary,” she stressed.

“Today’s meeting showed once again that, despite the Kremlin’s efforts, our cooperation is getting stronger and we are holding to account those who run these campaigns. Primarily, Estonia’s way against Russian influence is openness – the more people know how we are being attacked and what the goal is, the more the awareness and social resistance of people will grow,” the prime minister said.

Kallas added that external influence against European democracies is becoming more and more active and in addition to disinformation campaign, we are already seeing hybrid actions in physical and cyber space. “This is all a deliberate and targeted action aimed at destabilising European societies,” she said.

At the meeting, Kallas met with the new foreign minister of the host country, David Lammy, with whom they discussed not only the strong bilateral relations between Estonia and the UK, but also the current situation in Ukraine and the Middle East.

The meeting of the European Political Community was the fourth in a row. The leaders have previously met in the same format in Spain and Moldova and the first meeting was in autumn 2022 in the Czech Republic. In total, representatives from 47 European countries were invited to the meeting, but not Russia and Belarus. Leaders of the EU institutions, NATO, the OSCE, and the Council of Europe also took part.

Source: Estonian Government