West Shouldn't Worry About 'Humiliating' Vladimir Putin, Estonia PM Says

Estonia Prime Minister Kaja Kallas criticized Russian President Vladimir Putin for his invasion of Ukraine and said he rules in "virtual reality," in an interview with Yahoo News.

What Happened: Kallas also criticized French President Emmanuel Macron's comments that the West should not "humiliate" Putin in Ukraine to preserve the chance to find a diplomatic solution to the "historic" mistake of invading the country.

In her remarks on Macron's statement, she said, "When I was in Paris, driving around, I saw all those monuments to Napoleon, and it made me think: for a small country, war always means destruction, pain."

"But for a bigger country, it's not always so. War also means glory, new riches," she added.

Kallas added that she wholeheartedly agrees with historian Timothy Snyder's argument that Putin doesn't require face-saving concessions to withdraw from Ukraine. She said Putin could wind up the war in Ukraine and go home whenever he chooses and dress up the defeat as a popular victory. "His people will believe him," she said.

"Don't worry about Putin's feelings," Kallas said, adding that "in the Western world, we'd want to recover every one of our soldiers on a foreign battlefield; our instinct is not to leave anyone behind."

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"In autocracies, they don't care because soldiers' mothers aren't going to protest as they would in democracies."

Estonia, which underwent a massive political turmoil in the past few weeks, has sent more than $270 million worth of military assistance to Ukraine — nearly equivalent to more than 30% of its annual defense budget. The NATO member-state has provided armored personnel carriers, antitank mines, and a wide variety of small arms to the war-ridden nation.

When questioned in the parliament about large donations to Kyiv, Kallas defended that security assistance is not charity. "I answered that Ukraine is literally fighting for us. When Russia is at war with them, they're not at war with us. And we have peace here."

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