The West should not underestimate Russia’s military capabilities in Ukraine, the Estonian leader told The Associated Press, saying that as the war enters its fifth month, Moscow’s forces are there to help. long term.

Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas said in an interview on Wednesday that Europe should ensure that those who commit war crimes and attempted genocide are prosecuted, noting that Russian President Vladimir Putin escaped punishment for having annexed the Crimean peninsula in 2014 and supported an insurgency in the Donbass region of eastern Ukraine. killed more than 14,000 people before the war even started this year.

“I heard that, you know, there’s no longer a threat because they’ve worn themselves out. No, they didn’t,” she said of the Russian army, which failed to take Kyiv at the start of the war and is now concentrating its firepower in the east. .

“They still have a lot of troops that can come (to fight) – They don’t count the lives they lose. They don’t count the artillery they lose there. So I don’t think we should under- estimate longer term to maintain that,” Kallas said, despite low morale and corruption plaguing forces in Moscow.

PA