CURRENT AFFAIRS
Kallas and Stark Logistics: a moral compass for everyone else
27 September 2026 — Estonia / European Union
On 23 August 2023 Estonian public broadcaster ERR revealed that Stark Logistics, a transport company indirectly part-owned by Arvo Hallik, husband of then prime minister Kaja Kallas, had kept delivering goods to Russia after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Estonia's Internal Security Service concluded that sanctions had not been breached. The problem is not legal but one of consistency: Kallas was, and today as the European Union's High Representative remains, one of the faces of the line demanding that economic ties with Moscow be severed.
The words
On 21 April 2022, at a government press conference, Kallas said that in war one must choose sides and that most businesses have a moral compass. In August 2023, after the revelations, she reiterated that all trade with Russia must stop for as long as the war of aggression continues.
Facts
Hallik is the sole owner of Novaria Consult, which held 24.8% of Stark Logistics and 30% of Stark Warehousing. In her declaration of interests published in June 2023, Kallas had lent €350,000 to Novaria Consult; according to ERR, part of that sum was invested in Stark Warehousing. According to Hallik, the loan was repaid in instalments during 2023.
Stark shipped aerosol cans and metal containers to Russia for a single client, Metaprint, an Estonian company with a plant in Russia. According to the daily Eesti Päevaleht, as reported by ERR, it earned about €1.5 million from this business since February 2022: €1.1 million in 2022 and almost €475,000 up to August 2023. Martti Lemendik was the majority shareholder of both Stark Logistics and Metaprint. According to estimates reported by ERR, between the invasion and August 2023 Metaprint sold goods worth between €17 million and €30 million in Russia.
The defence and its limits
Stark and Kallas argued that the company was merely helping an Estonian client wind down its Russian business, in compliance with sanctions. In fact, in September 2023 Metaprint sold its Russian subsidiary for €18.6 million: it did not close it. On 24 August 2023 Stark's chief executive, Kristjan Kraag, acknowledged that many considered immoral what the company had believed was right, and announced an end to shipments to Russia in September.
Kallas stated that she was not involved in her husband's business and had never discussed the purpose of the loan with him. On 4 September, before the Estonian parliament's anti-corruption committee, she was unable to give its date. Hallik announced the sale of his stake in Stark Logistics and his resignation as chief financial officer and board member; he kept his stake in Stark Warehousing. Polls at the time showed a majority of Estonians wanted her to resign, and President Alar Karis said he would personally have preferred it. Kallas stayed in office with the backing of her coalition.
Implications — symmetry test
Towards businesses, the standard invoked was moral: choose sides, even beyond what the law requires. Towards her husband's company, the standard became technical: no sanctions breached, pre-existing contracts, an orderly exit from the market. Kallas imposed nothing on private companies beyond sanctions: she applied public and moral pressure. That is precisely the point. The pressure was not applied where she had a direct interest.
The symmetry test also works the other way. As High Representative, Kallas put forward ten options for measures against Israel, including a halt to imports from the settlements, which member states did not adopt; and this site documented how sanctions on minister Ben Gvir were blocked for lack of unanimity. Consistency is not judged once and for all: it is measured case by case, with the same yardstick. In this case, the yardstick used for others was not used at home.
What remains open
Kallas had lent money to her husband's company, which held the Stark stakes. Did she know that this network was delivering to Russia while she was asking others to stop? The official answer is no, and no public document shows otherwise. The question, however, has never received a verifiable answer, starting with the date of a loan that the lender herself could not specify.
“Something new”
September 2025, conference of the European Union Institute for Security Studies. Commenting on Beijing's celebrations of the 80th anniversary of the end of the Second World War, Kallas, by then High Representative, called the idea that Russia and China won the war against Nazism “something new”, lamenting that people today read and remember little history. The Soviet Union, whose main successor state is Russia, suffered more than 20 million dead; China reports a similar number in the war against Japan. One can contest the propaganda use Moscow and Beijing make of that victory. Denying their role among the victors is something else. Much of the controversy was amplified by Chinese state media and pro-Russian websites; the fact remains documented.
Sources: ERR 23/8/2023 · ERR 24/8/2023 · ERR / Eesti Päevaleht 2023 · ERR 2023 (Metaprint) · ERR 2023 (Kallas) · ERR 9/4/2024 · Estonian World 24/8/2023 · Bloomberg 25/8/2023 · Euronews 25/8/2023 · Euronews 14/7/2025 · EADaily 4/9/2025 · Responsible Statecraft 12/9/2025