EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas: 'Many' states back Estonia bid to bar Russian war vets
An Estonian proposal to bar anyone who has fought in the Russian military during its invasion of Ukraine from entering the European Union has plenty of support from within the bloc, the union's foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said.
Estonia recently announced it had barred 261 veterans from entering the country and the Schengen zone, and the government has called on the EU to follow suit.
The ban would mean the estimated hundreds of thousands of Russian combatants who have so far fought in the war against Ukraine, who present a security risk, would not be able to enter the EU.
This would remain in place even after the current war ended.
"Many member states around the table supported this. We agreed to take this proposal further, and test the appetite from the member states. This is one of the steps we need to prepare if there is a ceasefire or some kind of solution. We need to have answers before," Kallas said at a Council of the European Union press conference.
Poland's foreign minister Radoslaw Sikorski was open to the idea, though noted it might be equally good if a Russian officer traveling into Europe was detained while in the EU and ended up facing justice for war crimes committed.
"Some of these 'gentlemen' may be accused of war crimes, so perhaps it is a good thing that they come onto our territory," Sikorski remarked.
Sikorski's slightly ironic tone hints at how novel the proposal is, even for member states on the eastern flank.
A ban on Russian tourists entering the EU and Schengen area has also long been on the agenda with the EU, "Aktuaalne kaamera" reported, but consensus has not been found on this either. The hope in Estonia is that there may be a better chance of finding a pan-European solution regarding people who had been directly involved in the invasion and occupation of Ukraine.
However, even if the idea finds initial support, there is again so far no clear consensus on how it would be implemented. Estonia has already added nearly 300 names to a blacklist; the simplest solution, proponents say, would be for other member states to do the same.
This would also be necessary simply due to the sheer size of the job, Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna (Eesti 200), in Brussels for a meeting of EU foreign ministers where he raised the issue with colleagues, told ERR.
"The most important thing is to share the burden. In theory, Estonia itself could put the names of more than 600,000 or 700,000 people on the Schengen Area blacklist, but that is simply beyond our capacity," Tsahkna said.
Europe has not yet truly thought through the post-war picture, when in any case Russian tourists entering the bloc will inevitably have among their ranks those who had fought in the war, Tsahkna noted, while the end of the war would not mean an end to Russian influence activities and other attempts to destabilize Europe.
"We do not have a systematic policy at the European Union level on how, after peace arrives, to prevent Russian influence operations and, quite literally, the arrival in Europe of hundreds of thousands of criminal individuals and people with very questionable backgrounds," the minister added.
Tsahkna said earlier in this month that the ban would "carry an important political message about raising the cost of aggression" and would be "an important step in ensuring Europe's long-term security."
--
Editor: Andrew Whyte, Marko Tooming
