The Estonian prime minister has described the controversy surrounding her husband’s alleged Russian business links as a “witch-hunt” by political opponents calling for her resignation.
Kaja Kallas has been under pressure since reports emerged last month that her husband part-owned a logistics company that continued to do business in Russia after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
The couple say the business was assisting another Estonian company to wrap up trade in Russia. But calls for Kallas to step down are not going away, with the leader of the opposition, Urmas Reinsalu, saying he does not “see any other option”.
Speaking to the Guardian this week, Kallas dismissed the scandal as political opportunism by her rivals. “This is a witch-hunt by the opposition. It is an excuse to waste time in parliament and obstruct our progressive agenda,” she said.
Kallas, who has led a stridently pro-Ukraine government since coming to power, has defended herself by saying her husband, Arvo Hallik, is not a public figure and that she cannot be held responsible for his business activities.
In an interview with the public broadcaster ERR, she cited similarities with a controversy over the British prime minister’s wife, Akshata Murty, who was last year found to be receiving dividends from her stake in IT services company Infosys, which was still operating in Russia.
Sunak responded to the reports by saying his wife’s business affairs were not of public interest, while a Downing Street spokesperson said neither Murty “nor any members of her family have any involvement in the operational decisions of the company”.
The Estonian row, however, has dented Kallas’s standing, and the criticism is not coming only from the opposition.
The country’s president, Alar Karis, has publicly rebuked the prime minister for allowing the scandal to damage trust in politics and put the “credibility of the Estonian state into question”.
In an address at the opening of parliament season on Monday, Karis said democracy “does not end when a majority is received in parliamentary elections”.
Kallas, a former lawyer, is leader of the liberal Reform party which is the senior coalition partner in a government with the Social Democrats and Estonia 200, another liberal party. So far those parties publicly back her, but there are signs of growing discontent.
Lauri Läänemets, the leader of the Social Democratic party, said a resolution to the scandal remained in the hands of the prime minister. “We have emphasised that it is a question about trust and about restoring it,” said Läänemets, who is also the interior minister.
But the Social Democrat backbencher Raimond Kaljulaid, once a supporter of the prime minister, went a step further and said he could not guarantee his future support. “It is shaping up to be one of the biggest scandals in recent history,” Kaljulaid said.
“The prime minister has not made it better with her statements. She hasn’t had a handle on the situation. That worries me.”
In an article for ERR, he said that although Kallas “may have been likened to Margaret Thatcher in the past”, the scandal “resembles more Liz Truss”, the UK prime minister who had to resign after a chaotic 44 days in office.
Despite the controversy, Kallas says she intends to run for reelection as the Reform party chair, with the backing of her party.
As prime minister, Kallas has called on Europe to wean itself off Russian energy while bringing in about 62,000 Ukrainian refugees to Estonia. As a share of the population, no EU member state has taken more.
She has also ramped up calls for neighbouring countries to cut business ties with Russia through a potential common trade embargo agreement.
