Right now the most important news from Finland is the future of our security policy. Should we join the NATO or remain a kind of a neutral country we have been since the second world war - also before the WWII?
The change in the attitudes of our citizens has been quick. Before the Russian attack to Ukraine a vast majority of Finns supported neutrality, but now more than 60 percent of us support allying with the Western defense system.
The most important issue to us will be the delay between the submission of the application and the decision by NATO. During that time Russians will most probably use all possible hybrid means to press Finnish politicians. And actually, that has already started, as the embassy of Russia asked Russian speaking people in Finland to inform them about their possible experiences of discrimination in our country.
Russia also mentioned that Ukraine could be a similar neutral country as Austria or Sweden but remained quiet about Finland. So, that raised a question we Finns have been thinking thereafter. That is, what does that mean?
More specifically, does Mr. Putin have other thoughts on us - perhaps something similar Mr. Stalin had in 1939, when he - with the support of German Nazi-leader Adolf Hitler - tried to occupy us in a winter war, where at least 200 000 soviet soldiers were killed and even more injured. Many of them Ukrainians.
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This note is a landmark of the Thoughts of the Professor blog. I have previously published translations of my Finnish blog here, but it turned out that my motivation quickly decreased to zero. Therefore I decided to give up with translations, and write also in this blog unique texts, that are independent of my national blog. I hope you will find this interesting.
Previous thoughts on the same topic:
It takes heroes to avoid genocide
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