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Russian thug Putin and Finnish government returned Finlandization to Finland
9/20/2014 9:13:53 PM
According to President Putin's ex-assistant Andrei Illarionov, Russia is engaged in an information war in Finland and many other countries. The campaign is designed to distort facts about the war in Ukraine and to give Russia a podium for muscle-flexing, says the former presidential proxy in an interview to Finland's state TV network Yle.
The information war has several underlying causes. Russia wants to explain its presence in Ukraine to both Russians and external parties and at the same time it wants to show other countries who's boss, according to Illarionov, who met with Yle in Tallinn on Thursday.
"Like the local thug, Russia wants to show that it can do as it pleases," Illarionov told Yle and continued.
"The President of Finland Sauli Niinistö was the first and still the only president, the leader of a western country who went to Russia to meet with Putin after Russia started war against Ukraine, after the occupation of the Crimea, after the annexation of the Crimea, after many violations of international agreements, a number of international treaties, the UN Charter, the international Budapest Memorandum, and that is especially important to emphasize, the Helsinki Final Act in 1975.
In doing so, Russia sent a challenge to Finland as the country of the Helsinki meeting in 1975. Finland, however, answered the call, according to its own logic:
Mr Illarionov warned that a new Finlandization is under way Finland. He said:
"You can certainly try to understand the logic of the Finnish leadership which tried to find some workable solutions in this situation. But the fact remains. State visits at this level are properly perceived. They are perceived primarily in the Kremlin, and they were properly received. They are perceived in the world.
They began to offer to Ukraine a path of Finlandization. Relevant voices are heard, particularly from the Kremlin camp. This is a wrong path for Ukraine.
This path belongs to a different historical era and to another relationship between forces, to the presence of the Soviet Union which threatened the very existence of independent Finland. Now it's another era."
Mr Illarionov served as Putin's economic adviser and personal representative at the G8 from 2000-2005. He resigned in 2005, publicly announcing that Russia was no longer a free or democratic state.
He is currently working in the United States Cato Institute as a senior researcher and source of tough advice regarding Russia. He has shown a knack for predicting surprise developments in the Ukrainian war.
Last March, Mr Illarion told the Swedish daily Svenska Dagbladet that Putin wants Finland back.
But is Russia genuinely a security threat now or in the future?
"So far, Putin has not told of their plans, and that is why I try to avoid speculation," he says.
He does, however, point out problematic Russian legislations that would allow Putin to send troops to other countries. Finland could indeed be subject to such a move in accordance with the laws of the Russian State Duma.
Mr Illarionov regards sanctions against Russia as inadequate and dysfunctional.
"They are too small, they come too late and they are not influenced by Putin's activities," he said.
Even more severe sanctions should be put in place against Russia, in his opinion, sending a clear message that aggression in Ukraine must end.
Meanwhile, President of Finland Sauli Niinistö who is an ardent supporter of Finland's Finlandization attacked Mr Illarionov for critisizing the Finlandization policy of Finland's government. He said:
"We hear a lot of talk all over the world, there are enough Illarionovs out there."
Meanwhile, the new, post-Soviet Finlandization has intensified its victorious step in Finland.
On Saturday, the Green League decided to leave the coalition government due to govermen policy of Finlandization which envisages inter-alia a permission to Putin's thug country of Russia to build an electric nuclear power plant in Finland.
On Thursday, the party leader criticised the fact that the deal effectively involved handing a major infrastructure project worth billions of euros to the Russian state nuclear contractor Rosatom. Under current proposals Rosatom would own 34 percent of the plant.
The move will also increase Finland's energy dependency on Russia, he said.
"There is a sense of Finlandization here," Niinisto told the Financial Times. "We are giving the Russians the very leverage they are looking for with the west and the EU. This puts us into a very vulnerable position," adding: "Bluntly speaking, it is totally bewildering that the rest of the government thinks this is OK."
Department of Monitoring
Kavkaz Center
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