This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.

Andres Kuusk: Welcome to the program, Mr. Prime Minister.

Denys Shmyhal: Good evening.

It's good to have you here because today marks a historic day. It's 75 years since NATO was founded. Estonia used its window of opportunity 20 years ago. How optimistic are you that Ukraine will do the same now?

First and foremost, my congratulations on the 20th anniversary of your membership in NATO and the European Union.

So, now we are on our path to the European Union and to NATO. We are very grateful to Estonia for the absolutely great support for my country on both these paths. And I believe that we will do our [European Union] homework in a very fast way.

We are also doing our best to implement all the NATO standards and procedures into our legislation. In fact, our army is now fighting according to NATO standards. We are fighting with weaponry and equipment of NATO standard.

So, we believe that we may get an invitation to NATO [as soon as possible]. But we should do our homework together with our partners and we ask for support and this political decision because, in fact, and, according to the standards, we are a member of NATO, we are in fact allies of NATO and NATO countries. So, when this political decision will be taken formally by the allies is, for me, only a question of time.

So you must like our idea and slogan "never alone again"?

Absolutely. So we should be united as never before because we have a very serious enemy. No one better than Estonia and Ukraine knows all the historical evidence of the crimes of Russians and Russia against our people throughout history.

So we should be united and we are united with Estonia and we should be united inside of the EU because there is no other way to prevail and to win in this war.

Speaking about your visit to Estonia, you met the speaker, the president, and the prime minister. Is there a real message that you can bring back home to Kyiv?

First of all, this is the first official full-scale visit. We really had very very productive meetings with your speaker, heads of committees, with Mr. President and Madam prime minister. We had very good meetings at the technical university and very good conversations with your people.

First of all, we are very grateful to Estonia for such tremendous support, in general and in the military sphere especially. Estonia is a very good example for other countries about how to support a country in such a great aggression from the Russia side. We are really are very grateful that you implement all possible resolutions, initiatives, and sanctions We are very grateful for the IT coalition initiative. We are grateful for Estonia's participation in Estonia in the Czech initiative to supply artillery ammunition to Ukraine, we are very grateful to Estonia for more than half a billion dollars of military support for my country during these two years.

And your, I would say, model about how to implement 0.25 percent [of GDP] in your budget to support Ukraine for military purposes is an example for other allies for other countries. We are grateful for this.

Estonia is trying to help for example your energy company DTEK, we even sent a power plant to you.

Unfortunately, Russia continues its energy terror and just in the last weeks they [have] destroyed more than six gigawatts of facilities in our energy [sector] in hydro energy, in coal power energy. They continue their rocket strikes on our energy objects as they destroy transformers. They destroy generators.

Unfortunately, actually in heating generation they destroyed 80 percent. We know that you have old Soviet equipment here in Estonia and it would be very helpful for us if we could have these spare parts to recover these parts of our energy production stations and plants to bring back some part of this energy generation facilities.

We also work with other partners to create a decentralized system of energy supply for our population because now we have shortages of supplying energy to the population, to the people, and to industry.

Unfortunately, Russia continues its terror and It is a terrible thing when every night they try to destroy civilian infrastructure. They kill children, they kill civilians, they destroy civilian houses. So it's really a terroristic country.

It is terrible indeed. I'm sure you liked the statement from our president that said it is legitimate to attack infrastructure which is useful to the Russian army.

I think that your president means the attacks on Russian [oil] refineries. I think this supports the sanctions which are implemented against Russian industry. So this works. They stopped their export of gas and diesel and that influences the deficit of the products, I mean fuel products in their gas stations, and their population should understand that they should pay for this aggression. This is direct communication with the Russian population.

Do you have to tell this to the U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken because he just said the opposite?

So, actually, Secretary Blinken said that they are not encouraging us, but they can't forbid us to continue our fight for our freedom and for our independence.

Mr. Prime Minister, it is exactly two years, one month and 11 days since the start of the full-scale war. How are Ukrainians holding up?

The war is a terrible and very difficult and tough issue. But Ukrainian society is fighting for our lives, our homes, our families. We are actually the victims in this war. Russia is an aggressor. So victims cannot stop protecting themselves. So we cannot stop. If we just stop for any seconds, they will just kill us, they will just create a genocide on the territory of Ukraine and everything will be finished in a very fast way.

So we have the courage to protect our country, protect democratic and European values. This is our choice. This is an existential choice and we will continue. We are absolutely not exhausted. We are tired. It's natural because two years of this terrible, very difficult, very hard war, aggressive war, barbaric war from the Russia side. So it makes people tired, but not exhausted. We are absolutely ready to continue our fighting.

We are asking for more munitions because now we unfortunately have a lack of artillery ammunition. We have a lack of middle and long-range equipment to destroy Russian logistics on the frontline. When we have this support from our partners we will continue more actively to protect and implement some counter-offensive and liberate our territories.

I should note to finish this point that we liberated more than 50 percent of the occupied territories after 24.02.2022. So we liberated the Black Sea. Now having our own fleet on the Black Sea, we use the Black Sea to export our goods and the Russian fleet is somewhere in Novorossiysk or even [further away]. So we have the possibility, we have hope to liberate all of our lands and to win this war with the support of you Estonians, with the support of Europe, with the support of United States, so we believe that we will reach and we will win altogether.

There is also a lot of pessimism in Europe. In the media, among some politicians, they say Russia has shifted to a war economy. Even POLITICO asks are we now in the process of losing Ukraine? The question is can you still win this brutal war?

I should say that Russia is a very serious enemy and we should absolutely clearly understand [that] and estimate all the perspectives. Russia has become a military economy. They [have] really learned lessons during these two years and during the first months of the full-scale invasion. So now they increase their facilities, their capacities, they mobilize more people.

So we understand that they are trying NATO, sending the rockets to Polish territory, sending their drones to Romanian territory. So they have some intentions and we have very bad examples in our history when after such testing, Russia takes the next steps. So the only possibility to bring the European continent sustainable and long-term peace is to win this war on Ukrainian territory.

I believe that this is the only one [chance] for all of us and Russians will not give us another chance so because of this I will repeat we must be united, we must have one mutual purpose to stop to finish this war to liberate Ukraine, and to punish Russians for these war crimes.

But what if Europe will not wake up? For example, you just met the Polish Prime Minister and Mr. Tusk has warned that Europe has entered the pre-war era; are we?

I can tell you that Europe is waking up and it's good news. So European countries increase their budgets. European countries increase production of artillery, ammunition, military and defense equipment.

So we can see that the creation of the European Peace Facility and Ukrainian Assistance Facility are also very good signals and very good instruments to support Ukraine and develop capacity inside of the European Union, to protect European Union, plus NATO. We shouldn't forget about NATO. It's very good international alliance which in many ways brings more security than each ally may bring for themselves.

So NATO is a good instrument, Europe is waking up, we are preparing and producing more techniques and weaponry. I'm more optimistic and I believe that we will prevail and we'll win this war.

Are you very optimistic because pessimists don't win wars?

Absolutely.

That's good to hear. What's the latest with Ukraine's mobilization? I understand President Zelenskyy just lowered the age for mobilization by about two years.

Yes, yesterday [April 2] actually the president signed three laws that will make better conditions for mobilization, will implement electronic cabinet for all people of age for mobilization. We also discussed with our parliament and I believe that parliament will support and vote for this draft law for mobilization. Now discussions on the committee level are finished, so they are going through all the amendments and now we are waiting to bring this draft law for a second reading in our parliament. So I believe that parliament will adopt this.

Would it be enough? The president said in December that 500,000 men are needed. It sounds like a lot.

Actually, me and president commend the situation. We have changed the chief commander, he made an audit of the defense forces and they will begin rotations on the front line on the ground. This is the first time since the beginning of the full-scale aggression.

We understand that we do not need so many personnel right now and mobilization will be much much milder. I think that during this year, we will implement all the tasks which we need with mobilization of Ukrainians.

Actually, we have some new brigades with personel but we are waiting for equipment, for military techniques, for munitions from our partners. When we have the brigades will be formed and we will increase our capacity.

Let's talk about Russia. After the terrorist attack in Moscow, Vladimir Putin used the same old tactics. Blame the West and then blame Ukraine. Was it a false flag operation?

Absolutely so. It's an absolutely clear situation when ISIS takes responsibility for this terroristic attack on Russian object, but Russians again blame and lie as always. /.../ They are looking for the possibility to connect this to their attack on Ukraine. So they do it, it's part of their ideology, this is their propaganda, this is their disinformation.

This is actually this hybrid method of war /.../ All of Europe is under hybrid attacks from Russia.

Today we discussed cyber attacks, we discussed this with your president. Every day Estonia is under cyber attacks from the Russian side. In 2023, we registered more than 4,500 cyber attacks from the Russian state on Ukrainian infrastructure. So they continue these methods of hybrid war, disinformation, propaganda, cyber attacks, the migrant crisis, and other hybrid methods how to influence European countries and the Europea Union.

There have been several provocations in Transnistria as you know the region perfectly how worried should we be?

I think that Moldova and Transnistria absolutely clearly understand what Russia is doing now. How they are provoking, shaking this region and they are clever and wise enough not to go for any escalations.

But Russia really provoked this and they do everything to shake all possible regions here in the west part of Europe.

This is not only about Transnistria and Moldova, this is about also other parts they use. I will repeat these hybrid methods through which the parties influence political election cycles and periods so they are trying to shake the situation in many countries in West Europe.

Let's say a few words about your economy. We follow almost every step on the frontline, but how is the Ukrainian economy doing?

[There are] A lot of challenges of course. From the beginning of the full-scale aggression we lost 30 percent of our economy literally and physically lost fabrics, plants, agricultural lands are occupied and we lost more than 30 percent of our GDP. For 2023 we have increased our GDP by a little bit more than 5 percent. So our economy begins more or less to go back to the normal rails.

We implement many state programs to support our businesses. We support our military tech, we support our defense industries, we cooperate with fund partners creating joint ventures and it helps us survive. Unfortunately, we lost 3.5 million jobs. To bring back the possibility for people to survive and earn money for their daily lives, we implemented a program for small and medium businesses to support and the creation of micro-businesses.

These are very small grants, €2,000-€5,000 for example, and we gave these to people who are ready to organize small family businesses and it allowed us to survive and create the backbone of our economy. /.../

We are cooperating with all our partners, with the United States, with the European Union, we have a Ukraine facility instrument. There is 7 billion inside of this instrument for project implementation, for recovery, and I think that it will bring not bad results for our economy development and for our GDP increase.

And finally, spring is coming. Is there new hope for Ukraine?

We are always living by hope to win this war, to stop this war, but we are not only hoping, we are working hard. We pay for this war by our lives. I believe that this war will be through [soon] because we have support, we have support from you, from Estonia, from great nation. We are very grateful to your people, to your government. Thank you so much for supporting us in all directions and on our path to our mutual victory.

Thank you, Mr. Prime Minister and I hope the war ends quickly and with your complete victory.

Thank you so much.

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