Until a few months ago, Kaja Kallas, who resigned as Estonia's prime minister on Monday, was a lead candidate in the race to replace Jens Stoltenberg as secretary-general of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), but her reputation as a Russia hawk scuttled her chances.

Influential NATO member states, many from the European Union, agreed that, with the war in Ukraine, it was no longer possible to keep eastern member states on the fringe of the Brussels hierarchy. However, there were concerns that handing the top security job to a Baltic leader was too strong a message for Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Moreover, the possibility of a change in US leadership and calculations over who could best deal with Donald Trump should he win the November presidential election was also an issue.

Kallas took it on the chin and endorsed Mark Rutte as the next NATO boss. However, observers suspected her nonchalant exit was part of an agreement that paved the way for her to become Josep Borell's the EU high representative for foreign policy, a position for which she was nominated at a post-election EU summit in June.

Kallas, 47, was one of the first EU leaders to sound the alarm about Putin's expansionist designs, warning colleagues against falling into the "trap" of believing good trade relations with Moscow could avert the crisis that Europe later found itself in when Russia........

© Deutsche Welle