Ludmila Zhernovskaya23:59, 01.01.23

According to him, Ukraine’s partners took her struggle as their own.

Finnish President Sauli Niiniste compared Russian President Putin to Stalin in his New Year’s address.

The full appeal is published on the President’s website. He said that 2022 returned the country to the past, and the horrors of a big war returned to Europe. According to Niiniste, Finnish foreign and security policy is now going through a historic turning point. 

“If Russia believed that a large-scale threat would quickly bring Ukraine to its knees, they made a serious mistake in their judgments. One cannot help but think of the similarity of the situation with our Winter War, when the Soviet Union assumed that they would reach Helsinki within two weeks. As leaders countries with authoritarian rule, Stalin and Putin failed to recognize the key factor. The fact is that people living in a free country have their own will and beliefs. And that a nation that works together is a huge force,” he said.

The second mistake of the Russian Federation, he called the idea that European or Western compassion for the Ukrainian people will pass. 

“Just the opposite happened. Instead of just empathizing, we deeply feel this with the Ukrainians. We took the Ukrainian cause as our own. And support for Ukraine is only getting stronger. However, simply stating erroneous assessments does not answer the key question. How is it possible that the geographic border that runs through Europe is actually a border between two completely different worldviews?On this side of this border, it is impossible to even think that a nation could ever imagine that it could start a war against another.On the Russian side of the border, everything is different. The difference is fundamental and ultimately comes down to respect for humanity and human life,” Niiniste added.

He also noted that all these years wars continued in the world and there was a lot of cruelty.

“Perhaps we – in Finland, the Nordic countries, Europe and the West in general – just wanted to lull ourselves into thinking that cruelty will not reach us. Now it is approaching us. This makes us understand that not everyone is ready to accept our model of behavior which we consider correct. This forces us to learn to respond to other types of models and behaviors. At worst, to authoritarian and aggressive ones,” the President of the country emphasized.

(C)UNIAN 2022