Misleading2026-05
What is circulating
“Viral posts in May 2026 said EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas called China a "cancer" and quoted her as asking: "If Europe cannot defeat Russia, how should we defeat China?"”
Claimed by Posts on X and the Brussels Signal website · social media
The facts
Euronews found both claims distorted and out of context. At the Lennart Meri Conference in Estonia on 17 May 2026, Kallas used a medical analogy about responding to China's economic influence, comparing subsidies to morphine and tougher measures to chemotherapy, and the moderator called the posts a grave distortion. The Russia line was a shortened paraphrase of remarks at a Hudson Institute event on 27 February 2025, recirculated as new.