I’ve recommended “Ukraine vs. Darkness” by @olex_scherba before but just have to emphasise again how insightful it is for everyone who wants to understand 🇺🇦.
Its greatest merit is how painfully it shows that the Ukrainian perspective has been lacking in Western discourses
The book came out in 2021 so it doesn’t include the latest Russian invasion. Nevertheless every chapter is so full of truth. All of it was there for anyone to see but we looked away.
It deeply saddens me that e.g. this narrative is still floating around, after all 🇷🇺 has done
Or how many people totally bought the Russian - absolutely ridiculous - smokescreen of oppression of Russian-speakers
Or the narrative of “separatism” in Eastern Ukraine. Or that the annexation of Crimea by Russia was a bloodless occasion.
Putin did copy quite many things from Hitler’s playbook so no wonder all of NCEE sees parallels to WWII, not to WWI (like France and Germany)
Or here: Ukraine wasn’t “anti-Russian” until 🇷🇺 made it so.
Same with Finland. Some ppl buy the 🇷🇺 view that 🇫🇮 is causing tensions by joining NATO. But 🇫🇮 was an almost ridiculously good and considerate neighbour to 🇷🇺 until now. 🇷🇺 just has a way of antagonising its neighbours
Last but not least: it’s a fact that the West, or at least large parts of it, have been constantly prioritising its relations with Russia over Ukraine. It’s very, very sad that it took a full-scale invasion by Russia to change that - and even that change is not even complete
This is the book for everyone who asked !
P.S. have to add this quote: it’s indeed incredible how many people - not only in Russia - think that the US is behind everything that somehow goes against Russia. I keep reading and hearing takes that the US forced Finland and Sweden to join NATO too. It’s just 🤯🤯🤯
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
Q about other Nordic CHODs’ warnings about timelines for a Russian attack on NATO & why he isn’t issuing similar warnings: “they say it’s a possibility. Of course it’s always a possibility, but the question is its probability”
Jaakkola continues that he doesn’t think a Russian attack on NATO is *probable* in the near future. He doesn’t consider a similar wake-up call necessary in Finland as Finnish defence thinking has always included the *possibility* of a Russian attack and 🇫🇮 is therefore prepared
On Ukraine, Jaakkola says that the general speculation is a new large summer offensive by Russia to reach an as good as possible military situation to then start pushing for political talks about Ukraine’s and the West’s concessions.
The Finnish security and intelligence service is giving the annual press conference.
Overall assessment: Finland’s security environment has changed fundamentally and for good. There is no going back to status quo ante (with Russia).
Overall, Russian intelligence activities have decreased in Finland since 2022 due to countermeasures, such as expelling of known intelligence officers and visa restrictions.
Cyber threats and threats against critical infrastructure, especially maritime, have increased
“Russia has been the main subject of our work throughout our (75 years of) existence. It’s great to be able to say it out loud now” says the Finnish intelligence service officer.
There’s no going back indeed, the genie is out of the bottle
Russland ist nicht erst seit letzter Woche im Informationskrieg gegen euch, sondern versucht seit mindestens 10 Jahren (leider ziemlich erfolgreich) aktiv sowohl politische Entscheidungsfindung als auch öffentlichen Diskurs in 🇩🇪 zu beeinflussen !
Dabei kann Russland auf ein Netzwerk von Botschaftern, Generälen und Kanzlern a.D. sowie Politiker links- und rechtsaußen zurückgreifen die alle fröhlich die gewünschten Narrative in den deutschen Debatten aufrechterhalten.
Wir sind außerdem eh schon längst alle Kriegspartei in Russlands Augen. Russland ist laut Putins Propaganda im Krieg gegen die NATO und den Westen, und das ist was dort für Handlungsentscheidungen zählt, nicht das deutsche Grundgesetz.
Got tired of the defeatism that is AGAIN spreading in Europe amid the weekly warnings that Russia might attack NATO in 1-5 (or 20) years so I wrote about Nordic-Baltic preparedness.
Not everybody has been sitting on their hands for the past 2 years.
Finland has activated a war economy lite. The Baltic states have been busy jointly procuring air defence systems to establish the “Livonian air shield” and are working to reinforce their borders together in the “Baltic Defence Line”. Sweden is reaching 2% already this year.
The Nordic countries are using their NORDEFCO cooperation framework and the EU’s ASAP funding to increase ammunition production both for regional needs and for Ukraine. The Baltic states are doing the same. This is all happening already, not in 3 years.
Finland has quietly filled its wartime stockpiles and is activating some of the so-called “production reservation agreements” which means that companies produce at the armed forces’ request what is needed for logistics - basically wartime economy light
The Finnish Defence Forces (FDF) received extra money right in the spring of 2022 and started working on increasing stockpiles immediately, “luckily before many other European states woke up to the issue”, says the logistics chief - which means that the orders have been coming in
The analysis what is needed is based both on long-term assessments and the analysis of Ukraine’s ammunition consumption. Finland is already producing 5 times more heavy artillery munitions than pre-2022 but the capacity isn’t at max yet