Kaljulaid made his remarks Friday, after a Russian attack drone struck an apartment block in the eastern Romanian city of Galați. Two people were injured in the explosion — the first casualties in any NATO state arising from Russian drone strikes.

Russia had been conducting drone attacks in an area of Ukraine close to the Romanian border.

How should the West respond to the Romanian drone incident, and do we have any good options at all?

If you're asking for my personal opinion, I think that if someone is firing on you, you should fire back. In my ideal world, we would be talking today about a large smoking crater somewhere within Russia's drone industry, at a strategic facility, with the Russians wondering what to do with that information.

Who should carry out the retaliation — a NATO state?

Without a doubt. Unfortunately, in the real world, they are most likely not prepared to do that over an incident which was probably not intentional, which I think is a mistake.

I believe we have been too soft since 2014. For example, the Russians shot down a passenger airliner over Europe, killing hundreds of people, including many European citizens.

Another strong alternative, in my view, would be to do something in support of Ukraine that we have not done so far. Several countries have lists in their defense ministers' desk drawers of things they have previously said "no" to. Perhaps those "nos" should now be turned into "yeses", and the outcome would effectively be the same.

What do you mean by that?

We already know what those things are. They include certain long-range weapons and certain restrictions placed on Ukraine's use of military equipment. At this point in time, Russia has already escalated the situation. No one can accuse us of hiking tensions or creating additional risks of escalation. If it were down to me, I would focus on measures that would allow Ukraine to quickly build on the limited success it has achieved and the initiative it has gained on the battlefield, and to make the Russians feel the consequences, genuinely. Simply deploying additional resources to Romania, for example, means nothing to Russia at the moment.

Based on today's statements, do you sense any unity behind taking decisive action which Russia would understand?

I do not have that impression. I do not want to criticize institutions too much, because that already happens enough, but when I see the NATO Secretary General responding to this incident by saying that we will continue to defend all NATO territory, while at the same time a residential house is smoldering in Romania and people have actually been injured, and when we consider the risks involved — these are very serious matters. In my opinion, the response should be stronger.

As things stand today, after the incident, when President Putin was briefed on what had happened, some official might have told him: "Mr. President, one of our drones flew into a house in Romania and several people were injured." Putin then asks, "Romania is a NATO country. What did they do?" And the answer is: "Nothing, Mr. President."

If we do nothing, it means Russia has moved the boundaries, and we are living in a new reality. Many people live near the border in Estonia too.

Naturally they do. The defense minister also said that this risk exists round the clock for all countries bordering Russia. In my view, if we genuinely want to change Russia's behavior, we need to do something much more forceful. But if the alliance is not prepared to do that today, then we should think about how Ukrainians themselves might deliver that message to the Russians — not merely in words, but in a very tangible, visible, and unmistakable way. Ukraine already has all the necessary capabilities. We all know what those measures are. The time has come to take them out of the drawer and simply act.

Where is that red line whose crossing would trigger NATO's Article 5? Does such a line even exist, or is it so far off that Article 5 would never get invoked in practice?

Article 5 is actually worded somewhat ambiguously. But politically — and I am not a military expert, I am a politician — we all understand that it begins at the point where Russia deliberately, knowingly, and militarily attacks a Western country. In fact, one could argue that, in some respects, that line was already crossed with the attack on Sergei Skripal.

Exactly — it is possible to wage a kind of gray-zone war in such a way that we can never conclusively say any attack was intentional.

Indeed. This incident, and the reactions to it I have observed throughout the day, have affected me quite a lot. It seems to me that we have allowed this process to go too far and failed to respond at the right time. The sense of impunity that Russia currently enjoys will, I believe, come back to hurt us badly. I think this policy needs to be corrected.

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