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Minna Ålander 🌻

@minna_alander

Jan 13

@AtteHarjanne

Interestingly, Finland is internationally considered to be leading the leopard initiative, largely to the credit of the MPs @AtteHarjanne & @adleande and their op-ed supporting a European leopard coalition.

However, in Finland the matter is actually far from clear. Why ? 🧵

In the 🇫🇮 Defence Forces, each of the 200 leopard tanks has its specific & hard-to-replace wartime positioning and is crucial for national defence.

Hence, many Finns oppose the idea that of all European Leo countries Finland, with its 1340km border with Russia, should deliver.

On the other hand, the argument in favour of also Finland participating in a potential European leopard consortium is that the war is in Ukraine, not at our border, and it will likely take Russia some years to build back a sufficient capacity to seriously threaten Finland.

Read 8 tweets

Minna Ålander 🌻

@minna_alander

Jan 5

And here we go: Germany’s economy minister & vice chancellor Habeck said during a visit in Oslo that France’s decision to deliver AMX-10 and the U.S. potentially delivering Bradleys will “surely impact also decision-making in Germany”.

welt.de/politik/auslan…

After consultations with the U.S. in the past weeks, Berlin could announce a “qualitatively new step” in the military support to Ukraine very soon.

As long as it’s not an Alleingang, impossible things might become possible 🤷‍♀️
faz.net/aktuell/politi…

According to sources Germany could finally deliver Marders, which Ukraine has been asking for for months.

Within the government, the liberals and greens (and a growing number of social democrats too !) have been pushing for Germany to take the step.

sueddeutsche.de/politik/ukrain…

Read 5 tweets

Minna Ålander 🌻

@minna_alander

Jan 3

@UlrichSchnecke1

A very interesting analysis of why German leadership was so 🙈🙉🙊 towards Russia’s war narratives in the years before the 2022 invasion by @UlrichSchnecke1

“the guiding principles of Germany’s Russia policy for decades operated like a perception filter”
link.springer.com/article/10.100…

“The biased perception of Putin’s narratives even strengthened parts of Germany’s Russia policy instead of a critical review or the development of a plan b, should the own policy - that focused on dialogue and balancing of interests, despite signs to the contrary - fail.”

The analysed Russian narratives re: Ukraine are
a) the imperial, greater Russia “russkiy mir”
b) Ukraine as an “anti-Russia project”
c) western hegemony and “NATO expansion”

All three are essential parts of a revanchist world view and understanding of history

Read 10 tweets

Minna Ålander 🌻

@minna_alander

Jan 2

Instead of 3 days, it’s now been 300+ days.

Last year, Ukraine changed the lives of many people near and far by reminding us what freedom is worth.

May 2023 be the year of 🇺🇦 victory. But if it takes longer, then we must stay steadfast in our support.

president.gov.ua/en/news/novori…

Personally I’ll never forget the 24th of February 2022 and how for no obvious reason (since me or my family were in no direct danger) I just felt physically sick for the first weeks. I guess as a Finn, the invasion triggered some generational trauma I hadn’t been aware of.

And that, despite 80 years of peace in Finland. Just imagine, then, how it’s for people from e.g. the Baltics, for whom the latest historical trauma is much closer - only 30 years away.

Even the Swedes have been reminiscing of the Winter War a lot lately. It just hits close

Read 7 tweets

Minna Ålander 🌻

@minna_alander

Dec 10, 2022

Some thoughts about where Germany is at right now:

I fully appreciate both the big changes underway and how hard it is to have gotten into this situation where Germany is pretty much doomed if it does, doomed if it doesn’t.

An example are the leopard tanks: even if (when) Germany at some point decides to deliver them, the window of opportunity when it would’ve gotten applauded for it has been missed a long time ago.

The same with Germany’s (very significant !) support for Ukraine: the €100bn for German armed forces (while very necessary) and €200bn for domestic energy package really put the ~€5,5bn for Ukraine into perspective

Read 10 tweets

Minna Ålander 🌻

@minna_alander

Dec 8, 2022

@walberque

William @walberque & I had a look at the map of the Nordic-Baltic Sea region and this is what came out of it: analysis of how Finland and Sweden’s NATO membership changes the correlation of forces from a nightmare for NATO into a big headache for Russia

warontherocks.com/2022/12/natos-…

While the challenges of natural geography remain the same esp for the defence of the Baltics, 🇫🇮&🇸🇪 as Allies change the geography of deterrence in the region.

That is crucial for NATO’s future defence planning, although much depends also on the political ambition level

🇫🇮&🇸🇪 are joining NATO at a time when the Alliance is going back to its roots: territorial defence in Europe. That poses a challenge after decades of focusing on expeditionary/ overseas crisis management. Even after 2014, NATO’s response lacked credibility.

Read 6 tweets

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