Donald Trump can become a “Churchill of our time” if he secures a lasting peace deal in Ukraine, Estonia’s foreign minister has said.
In an interview with The Telegraph, Margus Tsahkna said he was hopeful Mr Trump could deliver a “long-lasting” ceasefire but warned that the president-elect would have to give Ukraine cast-iron security guarantees to do so.
“President Trump literally has an opportunity to become the Churchill of our times, and I’m not only talking about Russian aggression, but also the question globally of what the international rules are going to be,” Mr Tsahkna said.
“If Putin can declare that he and anybody else can change borders using force, and can constantly be aggressive without any real responsibilities, it can harm everyone [in Europe] and it can harm the US position as well.”
He said Estonia’s “clear position” was that Ukraine should be given “full Nato membership”, or equivalent levels of Western security guarantees, as this was the “only security guarantee which will work”.
Mr Tsahkna’s flattering comparison between Mr Trump and Winston Churchill follows similar statements from other European leaders who have been talking up his prospects of brokering a viable ceasefire once he takes office in January.
The president-elect has vowed to quickly end the war in Ukraine, but has so far provided few details on how he would achieve this.
Some of Mr Trump’s incoming advisers and JD Vance, his vice president, have already ruled out Nato membership for Ukraine as a deterrent against future Russian invasions.
Instead, they are said to be considering alternative “security guarantees” such as European peacekeepers, buffer zones and the threat of sending more weapons to Ukraine to create leverage over Russia.
Estonia, a Baltic state of 1.3 million people which shares a long border with Russia, is one of Kyiv’s most vocal allies in Europe.
In the aftermath of Russia’s full-scale invasion, Estonia spent more GDP per capita on supporting Ukraine than any other country worldwide, and it was one of the few to send weapons to Kyiv before the invasion even occurred.
Tallinn’s staunch support for Kyiv is partly due to its own traumatising experience of two Soviet occupations in the mid-20th century.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Baltic state joined both Nato and the European Union in 2004, becoming part of the first line of defence against a Russian ground invasion along with Finland, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland.
‘We cannot move to this trap’
This week Estonia will host the annual summit of the Joint Expeditionary Force, a UK-led rapid response force which complements Nato troops already posted near the Russian border.
The summit will be attended by Sir Keir Starmer along with the leaders of Latvia, Lithuania, Finland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark and the Netherlands.
Estonia has repeatedly called on the West to ensure that Ukraine can defeat Russia in military terms. However, its foreign minister has expressed concerns that Kyiv risks being pushed into a weak ceasefire agreement similar to the failed 2015 Minsk accords.
Referring to the ceasefire debate in 2015, Mr Tsahkna said: “The problem with this great willingness to establish peace is that we saw that in 2015. And it’s not long-lasting peace, or just peace.
“We cannot move to this trap, this is our clear position … the 2015 Minsk agreement did not stop Putin at all.”
Putin’s goals in Ukraine have not changed, the minister added, with the Russian leader still obsessed with gaining full control over all Ukrainian territory by political or military means.
Mr Tsahkna expressed disappointment that other EU and Nato allies did not follow Estonia in earmarking 0.25 per cent of GDP for Ukrainian defence supplies. The minister claimed such a move may have handed victory to Kyiv by now.
“If our allies had done the same thing we would have had €120 billion by now. But we don’t have this,” he said.
The West’s failure to help Ukraine defeat Putin militarily was due to sluggish weapons deliveries in the early stages of the war and unfounded fears of “escalating the conflict”, he said.
“If we had done everything that we have done for Ukraine in terms of military support in the first year, instead of the past two and a half years, it would be over and done with Putin.”
‘An ominous comparison’
The Estonian foreign minister also drew an ominous comparison between the approaching ceasefire talks and the appeasement of Adolf Hitler at the Munich conference in 1938.
At that summit, Britain, France and Italy naively allowed Hitler to annex the Czechoslovakian Sudetenland in a bid to sate his desire for further conquests of Europe.
Instead, Hitler was only emboldened by the pact, with Nazi tanks rolling into Poland the following year and unleashing World War Two.
As Emmanuel Macron and other EU leaders discuss sending a peacekeeping force to Ukraine, Mr Tsahkna said he wished that the focus would remain on giving Ukraine the weapons it needs now.
“Ukrainians are not asking for boots on the ground, or troops there. They ask for weapons. They ask for air defence. They ask for support. So it’s something we have to focus on.
“And then if you’re talking about the ceasefire and post-war situation, then I’m just repeating that the most efficient, cheapest way for us is the full membership of Nato,” he said.
Mr Tsahkna, who is also a former defence minister, said it was “brutal” that Mr Zelensky appears to be under pressure from some Western allies to lower the age of conscription to resolve a shortfall in troops.
“There would not have been a problem if we had given them enough weapons and ammunition [earlier in the war].
“This is a pretty brutal thing, to push president Zelensky and Ukrainians to mobilise young guys of 19 or 20 years and at the same time not give them the weapons and tools they need to go and fight,” he said.
It comes after president Zelensky posted a message on social media which noted “a lot of discussion in the media about lowering the draft age for Ukrainians to go to the frontlines”.
“The priority should be providing missiles and lowering Russia’s military potential, not Ukraine’s draft age,” Mr Zelensky said in the post on X.
Mr Tsahkna also addressed concerns that if Putin won the war, he would choose a Baltic state like Estonia as his next target in order to test Nato’s red lines.
“We are not thinking, what if they come against Estonia? We are not alone, if they come, they are coming against Nato,” he said. “And we are ready. More ready than ever before.”
Source: The Telegraph
