Russia’s Investigative Committee, the country’s top criminal investigation agency, has a dedicated department to deal with alleged “falsification of history” and “rehabilitation of Nazism”, and has ramped up its action since the start of the war.

Kallas said that Russia’s move was “nothing surprising” and “yet more proof that I am doing the right thing”.

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“The EU’s strong support to Ukraine is a success, and it hurts Russia,” she wrote on social media.

“Throughout history, Russia has veiled its repressions behind so-called law enforcement agencies. I know this from my family history. When my grandmother and mother were deported to Siberia, the KGB issued the arrest warrant.”

Kallas, whose personal popularity has been dented at home after it was revealed that a company part-owned by her husband continued doing business in Moscow in the past two years, warned in January that the small Baltic state must be ready for a conflict with its neighbour, saying that Europe had “three to five years” to prepare. Estonia shares a 294-kilometre border with Russia,

Since the start of the war in Ukraine, 4000 Estonian volunteers have joined the Estonian Defence League, an organisation created in 1918 when the country was born.

Banned in 1940, it was resurrected in 1991 when Estonia, which now has a population of 1.3 million, regained its independence after more than 50 years of Soviet occupation. Of the league’s 30,000 members – all of them civilians – a third belongs to the country’s territorial defence, whose reason for being is to counter a possible Russian offensive.

Russia’s charges against Kallas are among 700 cases against foreigners, which have clear political motivations, Mediazona reported.

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