Berliner Tageblatt - On US visit, Estonia warns of Putin 'upper hand' through talks

Estonian Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna and his counterparts from Latvia and Lithuania met jointly Tuesday in Washington with Secretary of State Marco Rubio as the Baltic nations -- all NATO members -- lead concerns over the new US push on Russia and Ukraine.

"Putin has now an upper hand in some ways," Tsahkna told AFP in an interview late Monday ahead of his talks with Rubio.

"The question is now, how long is Trump actually going to give Putin to play the games?" he said.

Trump campaigned vowing to end the war, which began when Russia invaded its neighbor in 2022, and bristled at the billions of dollars in weapons sent under former president Joe Biden.

Trump stunned many European allies when he reached out to Russia and berated Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in a disastrous February 28 meeting at the White House.

The Trump administration this week held talks separately with both Russia and Ukraine in Saudi Arabia and said that both had agreed to avoid strikes in the Black Sea.

The White House said in turn that it would facilitate Russian exports of fertilizer, one grievance of Moscow as the United States slapped sweeping sanctions over the invasion.

Tsahkna said Putin's main motivation was not to reach a ceasefire in Ukraine but more broadly to decrease US influence in Europe and restore his economy.

"The only person who can actually finish this war is Putin and we just don't see within the last couple of weeks that actually he has put anything on the table," Tsahkna said.

Putin is maintaining his "full-scale war on the battlefield" while diplomacy is ongoing, Tsahkna said.

"He sees the opportunity to ask everything that he wants to get," he said.

"If you see what Putin was like two months ago, or even more than two months ago, he was in a weaker position."

Tsahkna said there was no sign Trump would back Russia's demands and voiced support that the United States was again working with Ukraine.

Putin, he said, "understands only strength and hard talks."

The Baltic states, with their vivid memories of Soviet rule, have been at the forefront of defense spending and arming Ukraine.

Amid questions of US support, Germany last week approved three billion euros ($3.25 billion) in military aid for Ukraine, part of a shift that Tsahkna called historic.

The Baltic nations and Poland last week also took the first step toward exiting a treaty banning anti-personnel mines, pointing to the risk of Russia.

Tsahkna said that he expected Finland, which also shares a border with Russia, to follow suit.

While acknowledging the humanitarian risks of landmines, Tsahkna said, "We need to understand that Russia is a brutal country, and the war is very brutal."

"We need to use everything to protect NATO and us," he said.

I.Meyer--BTB