Security Policy | What is war, asked President Niinistö in Luumäki

Finland one must be able to prepare for all kinds of malice, says the president Sauli Niinistö president PE Svinhufvudin in the garden of the home museum at the annual Kotkaniemi forum in Luumäki.

“The hybrid world seems to be of such a type that there is no miracle man in the world who can list all possible threat factors,” Niinistö stated.

In his speech, Niinistö thought more broadly about what is meant by the words weapon and war.

“We have also made ourselves more vulnerable with the considerable and very helpful technical development,” Niinistö stated.

Niinistön according to, for example, violating digital connections or water networks may cause very wide-ranging consequences. In his speech, Niinistö wondered whether the recent events on these islands could be “the sum of coincidences”.

It is in June was reported about several burglaries targeting water supply facilities and their attempts. Police investigates also the knocking down of a cell phone mast in Janakkala as an act of gross damage.

“Many have woken up to the question of whether the much-talked-about escalation, which was very much guarded against, is already here. It’s just being fought with slightly different methods than the war in Ukraine itself,” Niinistö reflected in his speech.

However, Niinistö did not directly say how he would answer this question, for example.

His according to him, a practical example of the blurring of the border between war and peace was seen in 2014, when Russian troops began to appear in Ukraine on the Crimean peninsula.

“Then we wondered what these little green men could really be?” Niinistö stated.

According to him, everything was allowed to happen in Crimea “relatively freely” at that time. Therefore, even today, according to him, one should be able to see threats with a sensitive eye.

Later, in connection with questions from the audience, Niinistö wondered if the appearance of undocumented people at Finland’s borders, seen in 2015, could have been a practice activity by the Russians in case of a later event, which was used to test how Finland would react to it.

From Niinistö was asked at the event if we should be worried about the fact that Russia started last fall to allow undocumented immigrants to the Finnish border.

“The matter is taken quite seriously at the political level”, Niinistö assesses the activities of the government and parliament.

In July, the Parliament approved the so-called conversion law, which allows asylum applications to be temporarily suspended at the Finnish border and people to be returned to the Russian side without the right to appeal.

In his speech Niinistö also took a stand on the ongoing US presidential elections.

“The elections in the United States will not decisively affect the United States’ relationship with NATO,” Niinistö stated.

According to him, both Democrats and Republicans think that Europe should bear more responsibility for its own security.

Correction August 7, 2024: Corrected in one point in the article that Niinistö reflected on the refugee crisis of 2015, not the activity that started last fall.