Editor’s note: This piece was originally published in May 2022. On 27 June 2024, European Union leaders selected Kaja Kallas, Estonia’s Prime Minister, to succeed Josep Borrell as the EU’s foreign policy chief. The politician has long been one of Europe’s most outspoken Russia critics and fiercest defenders of Ukraine.

Breathe in,” Siim Kallas told his daughter in 1988. “It’s the air of freedom that comes from the other side.” Kaja Kallas was 11 at the time. To travel to East Berlin from her native Estonia, then still under Russian occupation as part of the Soviet Union, was a big…