LIKE A KENNEDY in America, Kaja Kallas has carried both the privilege and the burden of her family name. Her father, Siim Kallas, an economist, was the first head of independent Estonia’s central bank, prime minister from 2002 to 2003 and the country’s European Commissioner from 2004 to 2014. (He is the only person to have been a member both of the European Commission and the Supreme Soviet, the Soviet Union’s legislature, in which he served briefly before the country’s collapse in 1991.) For years, even after becoming leader of the Reform Party her father had founded, Ms Kallas struggled to live up to his legacy. Many Estonians thought her honest and intelligent, but too nice to lead the country.

Once she became prime minister in 2021, that changed. Her pleas that more sceptical European leaders should believe American warnings that Vladimir Putin was planning to invade Ukraine proved correct. Her tiny country (population 1.3m) became proportionally one of Ukraine’s biggest donors; after she ordered the dismantling of Soviet war memorials Russia issued a warrant for her arrest. International journalists began referring to her as an “iron lady”.