Dead | Lada through Russia and a letter to Putin – journalist Pekka Hakala is remembered for these stories

From Vyborg to Vladivostok

In 2016 Pekka Hakala bought a used Lada and turned the bow towards the Pacific. Reeta-Lada took the reporter through Russia. Almost 11,500 kilometers were accumulated on the odometer. Hakala wrote a 19-part reportage series for HS about her trip. Read the story.

Part 1: HS bought a Lada – “Yes, it can get you to Vladivostok and even back”

Part 2: The park that Annikki Tähti misses is falling into disrepair in Vyborg

Part 3: Violent passings were recorded on camera – Does the mysterious icon of Tihvinä protect in traffic?

Part 4: HS’s Lada got its first taste of the roads of the Russian countryside: “First you laugh, then the tires crash into a half-meter ravine”

Part 5: In the middle of the green gold in Kirov, the restaurants are named Ruokali

Part 6: A small piece of the infamous archipelago of prison camps – HS’s correspondent made it to Ladalla on the western slopes of the Urals

Part 7: HS-Lada crossed the Urals after driving almost 3,000 kilometers – oil consumption seems to have mysteriously decreased

Part 8: In the luxurious Yeltsin center in Siberia, the president’s great achievements are on display – an iron, a vacuum cleaner and a video recorder

Section 9: Along the Tetsja River, the radiation meter vibrates recklessly, but there is still fishing on the banks

Section 10: Money and gas burn behind the Urals

Section 11: Victory Day was celebrated in Omsk to the beat of wartime beats

Section 12: Thank God, clean fuel from Putin!

Section 13: HS correspondent travels through Russia – Reeta-Lada stops in the city where Svinhufvud was deported

Section 14: Karhunlaukka is a Siberian delicacy – Vladimir sells them on the side of the road

Part 15: HS-Lada was repaired and washed – in Irkutsk, glasses are enough for a welding mask

Section 16: Hitchhikers are a disappearing nation in Russia as well, HS-Lada found out on the way to Vladivostok

Part 17: HS’s Russia-crossing Lada plunged straight into nirvana from Siberia

Part 18: With Sergei over the hills of Manchuria

Part 19: HS’s Reeta-Lada has been following in the footsteps of Anton Chekhov since Perm – you could have hung out with the author in Pereyaslavka

A letter to Putin

When Russian president Vladimir Putin turned 70, Pekka Hakala showed him a letter on the website of HS. “I think you will understand my choice when I avoid strong expressions like ‘respected’, ‘highly respected’ and so on,” Hakala began. Read the story.

Field of death

of HS As a Moscow correspondent, Hakala ended up in an eastern Ukrainian field to report on a downed passenger plane. He remembered the gig in his Black Box performance. “At least one of the dead had come through the roof of the next-door barn,” Hakala flashed her dark humor on the stage of the National Theatre. Read the story.

Whitefish don’t lie

Pekka Hakala was a passionate fisherman. He kept a fish diary of the catches of his cabin waters in the Perämeri for decades. In the summer of 2019, he wrote in his article how science supported his recorded observations of a warmed sea. Read the story.

This was the case in Aleppo, which was bombed to pieces

In the spring of 2017 For her interview, Hakala found the residents of Aleppo, Syria, in the ruins of the war. “After a few minutes of yelling, the little boy in the yellow shirt comes to open the bottom door closed with a chain and padlock,” he wrote. Read the story.

Afghanistan’s record crop of narcotics

In the year 2007 Hakala was a photographer who traveled Hannes Heikuran with to Afghanistan. He interviewed a poor tenant farmer who grew poppies, the raw material for heroin, to support his family of 20, even though it was illegal. “During Easter week, the field bloomed beautifully, and the seed pods were already the size of a plum,” Hakala described what she saw. Read the story.