Baltic and Polish officials are accused of being hostile to Russia because of a different view of their relationship's history, prompting the Kremlin to issue the sought-after announcements.
“The action of the Russian Federation is not surprising, as it is its usual intimidation tactic,” Kallas condemned in a statement, pledging continued support for war-torn Ukraine and a fight against “Russian propaganda.”
“I will not be silent, I will strongly support Ukraine, I will speak out in favor of strengthening European security,” he said.
The Baltic states, EU and NATO members who fear the Kremlin's military ambitions consider them occupied by the Soviet Union, while Moscow sees itself as a liberator and judges any other approach as “falsification of history”, a crime in Russia. .
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Tuesday that Ms Kallas and other Baltic and Polish officials were being prosecuted for “destroying monuments to Soviet soldiers”.
“Crimes against the memory of the world's liberators against Nazism and fascism must be punished. This is only the beginning,” he added.
In recent years, these monuments, inherited from the Soviet Union after World War II, have been removed in several Baltic states and in Poland, as a symbol of rejection of the Soviet era, which these states consider to have been occupied by the Soviet Union.
A Russian minority lives in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, three former Soviet republics now members of the European Union and NATO, which have tense relations with Moscow.
These relations have further deteriorated with the conflict in Ukraine. The Baltic states, which consider the threat of a Russian invasion as real, actively support Kyiv in its fight against the Russian military.
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