Estonia will not repatriate Ukrainian refugees who reside in the country under legal protection and it is up to Kyiv to persuade them to return, Estonia’s Prime Minister Kaja Kallas (Reform), told President Volodymyr Zelinskiy during his visit to Tallinn last week.

"President Zelenskiy [described] that there are people who are on the battlefield, and then there are people [in the rear] who are paying taxes to Ukraine so that you can fund the soldiers who are on the battlefield; then there are also people who are in foreign countries like Estonia," she told The Kyiv Independent in an interview.

"Now, for us, they have the right to be here if they go under those rules – if they have reached us, then the European Union gives them temporary protection," the Estonian head of government explained. "So we will definitely not do anything on our side to give those people up. It is up to Ukraine to really turn to the people who are here and request [that they] come back to help their motherland."

Speaking at a joint press conference following his meeting with Kallas in Tallinn on January 11, Zelenskiy said that his country needs the men of mobilisation age who fled abroad to return to Ukraine, either to fight against Russia or contribute to the economy.

Estonia has been the destination for tens of thousands of refugees from Ukraine since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of the latter in February 2022.

Late last month, following Zelenskiy's announcement that Ukraine was in need of up to 500,000 additional troops to switch with those on the front, prompting them to appeal to mobilisation-aged refugees who had fled abroad, Estonian Minister of the Interior Lauri Laanemets (SDE) had expressed the country's support for helping repatriate relevant refugees to Ukraine.

"If Ukraine needs it, then Estonia can manage to find and repatriate this person to Ukraine," Laanemets said on December 22. "We know in essence where these individuals are located and what they are doing.  A lot – the majority of them work; they have places of residence in Estonia."

While no official requests had yet been received from Kyiv at the time, the Estonian Ministry of the Interior had itself already repeatedly reached out to both the Ukrainian ambassador as well as Ukraine's interior minister to report refugees in the country if needed, and Laanemets was expected to offer a written proposal to conclude an agreement accordingly between the two countries, according to ERR.ee, the website of national Estonian broadcaster ERR.