In a startling warning during his trip to Canberra this week, Estonian Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna said global security would be threatened if a peace deal in Ukraine was viewed as mission accomplished. Ukraine’s supporters, including Australia, must be prepared for an aftermath of Russian hybrid warfare involving out-of-work Russian fighters, Tsahkna said.
Canberra should begin working now with Europe to develop a comprehensive travel ban for the nearly 1 million combatants fighting for Russia in Ukraine, the foreign minister said, speaking at ASPI. It would be a double win for President Vladimir Putin if many of these battle-hardened fighters, some of them also rapists and murderers, didn’t return to Russia and were dispersed throughout Europe and other countries, including Australia.
Better than any nation, Russia has shown it can act on multiple fronts, including systemic hybrid warfare. What unprecedented level of grey-zone acts could it employ if unburdened in Ukraine?
How Putin could use a million unemployed and violent men must be examined before the war ends. The world, and Europe particularly, has already suffered from being unprepared for foreign fighters flowing from the rise and fall of Islamic State in Syria and Iraq. And Putin has form in weaponising migration, including working with his acolyte, Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko, to channel refugees into Europe. The nexus between the Kremlin and Russian criminal networks could bring people as far as Australia.
Tsahkna also urged Australia to join Estonia to support the Council of Europe’s special tribunal for the new crime of aggression. This would deal with those responsible for directing Russia’s war from behind the lines, complementing International Criminal Court prosecutions of wrongdoers on the frontline.
The Estonian minister rejected the notion that Western pushback against Moscow risked creating a vicious cycle of mutual insecurity. Western fear of escalation meant aggressors such as Russia, China and Iran had been encouraged in coercion. Recalling Estonia’s tragic history caught between the Russian and German empires, he argued that the freedoms that democracies enjoy today must be defended or risked being lost. Bullies such as Putin respected only strength, including hard power, which was why Estonia had a defence spending baseline at 5 percent of GDP. Unless democracies set and enforced red lines, authoritarian regimes could act opportunistically and miscalculate the consequences. Putin had done so in 2022, undeterred by the lack of pushback after his incursions into Georgia and Ukraine in 2008 and 2014.
Just as democracies had wrongly thought they could shape a rising China, European leaders mistakenly thought they could pacify Putin with economic incentives and energy pipelines, Tsahkna said. As it has done with Ukraine, Moscow would continue to undermine the democratic world’s solidarity by playing on the fear of escalation, which Tsahkna said was a bluff that should be called.
Like Lithuanian and Latvian leaders, Tsahkna also sought to discredit any false equivalence between the authoritarian regimes in Moscow and Beijing with the Trump administration in Washington. US allies should be able to express dismay at unjustified US actions while recognising their partnerships with the United States as the foundation of national security. Tsahkna reckoned Putin was actually more afraid of President Donald Trump than he had been of Joe Biden or Barack Obama but that Trump was yet to use that position of strength.
Tsahkna was confident of ongoing US commitment to European and global security so long as allies accepted their share of the security burden. He pointed out that Trump had responded to incursions into Estonia by Russian warplanes last year by saying that NATO forces should shoot down future intrusions. Tsahkna is firmly in the camp of global security requiring both national investment and US leadership. He welcomed European countries’ taking greater responsibility for their security—such as French President Emmanuel Macron’s announcement this month about extended nuclear deterrence—but as a complement to US engagement, not a substitute.
European and Indo-Pacific security were no longer separate, particularly given China and Russia’s ‘no-limits’ partnership.
Tsahkna called for closer ties between Estonia and Australia, especially on critical minerals. He argued that Estonia’s leading European position in processing critical minerals and making rare-earth magnets meant there was clear potential to expand cooperation.
Tsahkna’s strategic philosophy is that democracies must enforce principles and not forget who they are. This is a call for a return to values-based foreign policy, which remains vital for small, middle and regional powers, such as Estonia and Australia, even in today’s world of great powers.
The principles and bonds that tie democratic allies together remain a strategic difference and advantage over authoritarians. In this regard, Tsahkna felt honoured to take home from Australia an Estonian flag that had been flown at the Kadriorg Palace in Tallinn in 1944, during Estonia’s brief days of independence between Nazi retreat and Soviet arrival. The flag was smuggled to Australia by Estonian refugee Eugen Vilder and not discovered by his family until 2025, years after Vilder died. Its return is a poignant moment for Estonia. It’s also a reminder to Australians that the freedoms we cherish are precious and worth fighting for.