Former President of Estonia Toomas Hendrik Ilves: I’m Waiting for the ‘Flamingo’ Phase

• 1.09.2025, 16:44

An exclusive interview for Charter97.org.

Former Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves is a strong supporter of democratic Belarus and Ukraine in its fight for freedom.

In an exclusive interview for Charter97.org, the former head of Estonia explained how to correctly interpret the processes taking place in Russia, shared his forecast for the end of the war in Ukraine, and offered advice to Belarusians who want to see their country in the EU.

— Joint Russian-Belarusian military drills Zapad-2021 became a cover for the buildup of the Russian troops along the Ukrainian border ahead of the full-scale war of aggression. What are you making of the drills Zapad-2025 which are scheduled to take place in September?

— This is a rotation. They have one every year: Zapad, Vostok, Tsentr, Kavkaz. It will be interesting to see what they practice and what they can even put out in this upcoming exercise because the Russian military is in a rather poor shape now compared to where they were in 2021. We watch what they do and some of it can be pretty funny. Last time they had huge hovercrafts without any warning just driving up onto Kaliningrad beach with thousand people there running for their lives because in typical Soviet-Russian fashion no one was warned that this would happen, so they were all scared. We will see what happens. I am sure it will be followed closely by NATO people.

— It was announced that during the drills they will make a test of hypersonic ballistic missiles Oreshnik and they will also make a simulation (whatever it means) simulation of a nuclear strike.

— The only thing they can do is they can maybe fire something from Kaliningrad and then they can practice what they do inside Kaliningrad because otherwise how do you simulate it the countries around?

— Do you see any danger for the Suwalki gap in relation to the drills Zapad-2025? Any potential for any provocations in that direction?

— Frankly, I don't know where they get the troops to do any kind of provocations. It is a 60-kilometer diameter compact area. But we will see what they can do. Clearly, they will not do anything of a sort of standard warfare. Maybe they will do some kind of something with illegal migrants, something typically Soviet or Russian to harass the Poles and the Lithuanians. We will see.

I don't think anyone here is particularly worried. I think people are more curious as to what they're going to try to do. It's clear that they're having a very hard time in Ukraine right now. It will be interesting to see what they can put out. It's also interesting that Skabeeva recently was talking from some strange Polish source about how “the Estonians plan a preemptive attack on Russia” — standard nonsense that they make up.

— So, you don't see imminent danger for the Baltic state from the upcoming drills?

— I do not see that. If there was a real danger, you'd see build up. As long as we don't see a build up against the borders of the Baltic countries, there's nothing really to worry about. We will just observe how they do their Soviet style military exercises.

— Before this terrible war of aggression, you used to say that the best way to understand Putin's Russia was to watch the movie The Godfather. What is the best way to understand Putin's Russia after Bucha?

— There is this standard liberal criticism that one should not essentialize Russia and say "Russia is like that". On the other hand if you look at the history of Russian behavior for the past 500-600 years with its neighbors: coming in, butchering, raping, deporting massive amounts of people — they did it here in Estonia under Ivan the Terrible, under Peter the Great… They did it in Finland, in Latvia, Lithuania — now you see it in Ukraine. If there's this historical pattern of behaving really badly, then I think we do have to finally admit that Russia has not changed and Russians are like that, and part of their approach is military conquest and killing males, raping women and taking children — that's the Russian way of war.

— How is it inside Russia? Is it all Russland über alles now?

— The propaganda machine has been going for so many years, but that certainly seems to be the case.

The other side internally with Russia is that the economy is really in trouble and the number of men that are signing up is going down and they dramatically decreased the amount of money they pay for people to go to Ukraine. I am waiting for the flamingo phase of this war.

— Putin is a war criminal, but before he became such there were many enablers — you even invented the term Schroederization. Who do you see as the main enablers of Putin?

— Right now I would say largely you can see it in the Trump administration where at the executive level they do not really want to admit that Russia is doing anything bad. You saw this in February 2025 when the US sided with Russia in the UN resolution on Ukraine. The United States voted with Belarus, with North Korea — even China abstained. You saw it also in March when the US vetoed the G7 proposal to ramp up sanctions against Russia’s shadow fleet of oil tankers. So what is the country that is stopping a united Western front? Back then it was Gerhard Schroeder, now it is the Trump administration.

— What is the likelihood of Trump-sponsored peace deal between Russia and Ukraine?

— I don't know what that is at this point. Certainly, with regard to the land swap there is nothing to swap with Russia when Russia is not at the table. So I don't know. We have these nebulous security guarantees which the US seems to have walked back from most recently. This is a problem we have with the US right now is that they can change their position constantly and often do. Whatever he promises one day, we don't know what he will do the next. He promised all kinds of things in the past two months: if Putin doesn't do this in two weeks, then… Well, then nothing happens. Now again two weeks. We will see.

— Let's talk about change. Before the Anchorage summit, many people expected that Trump would press for a ceasefire. Then after the talk with Putin any mention of the ceasefire disappeared. What happened?

— Very typical: he said he wanted it, and then he suddenly didn't. With no mention of why.

— Before the war, you said that the West had lost its moral clarity. Has the West regained moral clarity during the wartime?

— I wouldn't say the West. I would say that Europe certainly has overcome much of its waffling and inability to take a position — that is a substantial change. On the other hand, if you consider the US as part of the West — it has lost its moral clarity. Not that it was great during the Biden administration, which I thought was extremely weak and unwilling to actually stand up for anything, but certainly we are better off today in Europe than when Olaf Schultz was trying his best to prevent anything from happening and somehow having a bad relationship with Russia since that was paramount to him.

Three years after Zeitenwende ("historic turning point" in German), suddenly with a new chancellor with Friedrich Merz, we have had a genuine Zeitenwende. The turning point was proclaimed by Olaf Schultz on February 27th in 2022 — nothing changed. He continued to be a Russland-versteher. Now everything is different.

— What are you making out of the recent Trump-Lukashenka phone call ahead of Trump's Putin summit in Alaska.

— I have no idea. That was so bizarre.

— Will Putin ever agree to meet with Zelensky?

— I seriously doubt it. He has this idea that his undemocratic regime is “democratic” and that legitimately elected president is “illegitimate”. What do you do with this? There's nothing. I still think that it would be too difficult for him to walk that back. Though, nothing is impossible in Putin's Russia, but still, it's unlikely.

— How long will this war last?

— Until the Russians can't take it anymore. The economy is slowing down dramatically. They're losing on the battlefield. Here is a typical story (I blame some of the westerner). Russians had rapid tactical deployment around Pokrovsk. We have heard, "Oh my God! The battle is changing. The Russians are advancing." Then the Ukrainians eliminated them in four days. All what happened was that several thousand Russians lost their lives.

I think that there are basically two options. Either we get a stalemate, which after a while people will call a temporary armistice, like North Korea has with South Korea. Or — it becomes too expensive for the Russian regime to continue.

— So, the economy is the main pressure point for Europe to end this war?

— This is why I'm worried about Trump lifting sanctions.

— There is a risk of Trump lifting sanctions?

— He hasn't followed through on any of his promised sanctions and he's such a big friend of Putin these days.

— Let's imagine Belarus day after Lukashenka. What are the main challenges to make it an EU country? How do you rebuild a country?

— The first one is Lukashenka, but then, day after — the same kind of significant reforms that Estonia went through in 1991-1994. Tough radical reforms that will reset the economy into a market direction. Certainly you need to put on trial the perpetrators of the totalitarian regime. Then, once the reforms start — and if they are sustained — then eventually Belarus can join the European Union, but that will take a lot of time.

Estonia became independent in 1991, and when we joined the European Union in 2004. We were one of the fastest. Everyone joined in 2004, but, in fact, we could have joined earlier. But then the European Commission decided to slow things down for us and for the Czechs at the time simply because they didn't want to have it staggered. They just said, "Let's take them all at once." And so that meant that we had to wait.