🇫🇮 President Niinistö says at a presser at #MSC2023 that the German claims that Finland would be backtracking from the leopard coalition are not true.

🇫🇮 is part of building the “weapons arrangement”. Yesterday Niinistö also said that Finland won’t be “on the sidelines” in this
This is prob as clear as it’ll ever get - Niinistö is infamous for being cryptic and it’s been the 🇫🇮 approach to weapons deliveries to Ukraine never to give details.

Niinistö had talked with Scholz today but said that Scholz had not expressed any particular requests re: leos
*in Finnish Niinistö said “asekokonaisuus”, maybe a better translation would be “full range of weaponry” but it’s hard to translate - anyways it makes clear that it’s about the weapons system and not only about training, maintenance, logistics etc.

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
 

Keep Current with Minna Ålander 🌻

Minna Ålander 🌻 Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @minna_alander

Feb 20
This conspiracy theory on German Twitter that everyone criticising Germany is a PiS supporter/ somehow in on a Polish govt plot is just bananas. Which country does it remind of, to suggest people who don’t agree with you are foreign agents…? Image
Just blaming PiS (which has for years been a big troublemaker in Europe for sure but has proven a reliable ally for 🇺🇦) is simply a lazy way to deflect criticism. I know that Germans can do better because critical debate culture is an important part of Germany’s public discourse
If it’s any consolation to frustrated SPD supporters (?), I’m equally unpopular with PiS supporters because I keep criticising Visegrad24. Have a look at some of the comments to this tweet and you’ll find that they find me too “pro-German” 😉 it’s all a matter of perspective
Read 5 tweets
Feb 20
Hilarious on Finnish Twitter atm: a very tired Russian attempt at election meddling (🇫🇮 has parliamentary elections in early April), with trolls/bots that make extremely funny mistakes with the Finnish language. The best so far has been a failed attempt to discredit NATO:
The bots mean to say that NATO can’t save Finland. But there are 2 possible translations of “save”, depending on whether you mean saving a document or saving from a danger. (Like in German: speichern vs. retten).

They chose the wrong translation (save like a document)
This makes for hilarious jokes and Finns are having a good laugh. But also feeling slightly disappointed* that this is the level of commitment Russia is showing.

*🚨 irony alert 🚨

The mood right now:
Read 5 tweets
Feb 19
A main difference in European approaches toward Russia is the question which world war the current situation is compared to: France and Germany have tended to think of WWI/ Germany after Versailles while NCEE countries see more parallels to WWII/ nazi Germany
Obviously, the conclusions drawn on how to deal with Russia after this war are very different, depending on the world war one takes as comparison.
Another problem is often that people advocating for some kind of accommodation of Russia as the only way to prevent future resentment and renewed aggression overlook that there has been no shortage of negotiations and treaties with and reaching out to Russia in the past 30 years.
Read 4 tweets
Feb 18
🇫🇮PM Marin said in a presser at #MSC2023 that Europe’s response to Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 was inadequate and too slow, Russia should have been isolated already then. Business as usual was a mistake and sanctions by far not hard enough.
Marin continues that we should’ve listened to our Baltic and Polish friends more closely because they had a more realistic assessment of Russia than many other European countries, including Finland.

Going forward, it’s important not to repeat the same mistakes as after 2014.
Marin also says Europe wouldn’t manage on its own and US military capacity is what gives NATO’s article 5 credibility. She also praised the bipartisan support for Ukraine in the US.

According to Marin, military aid to Ukraine is priority topic at all tables at #MSC2023
Read 5 tweets
Feb 17
Reports are mounting esp in 🇩🇪 press that after having finally decided to supply leopard tanks to Ukraine, Germany has now been abandoned by countries that had signalled willingness to contribute their part.

I did some research to find out what’s up with 🇳🇱🇩🇰🇸🇪🇫🇮
The Netherlands doesn’t have any own leopards but leases 18 from Germany.

PM Mark Rutte had suggested that 🇳🇱 could buy the 18 tanks from 🇩🇪 & deliver to 🇺🇦. However, after consultations with 🇩🇪, it was decided that the leopards for 🇺🇦 should not come from the 🇩🇪🇳🇱 battalion
Part of the perception that the Netherlands is one of the drivers of the leopard initiative is that the Dutch (both citizens & politicians) are very supportive what comes to military aid to 🇺🇦 and it’s politically pretty much a non-issue.

However, 🇳🇱 doesn’t have much to give.
Read 15 tweets
Feb 17
One year ago, a staggering amount of military analysis got both Russia and Ukraine wrong. An important reason for it was that analysis based on counting equipment and looking at (scripted) exercises misses one crucial point: the human element.
If you don’t pay attention to

1) what number of people are available to operate the equipment (see Sweden: lots of jets but not enough pilots)
2) what is their skill level (see Bundeswehr’s puma incident where malfunction of the equipment was partly due to lacking know-how)
3) their motivation: the role of willingness to defend (i.e. motivation to fight)

you’re bound to get the military capability of a country wrong because the number of equipment alone doesn’t tell you the whole story.

Not to even get started about maintenance & logistics
Read 11 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!


This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Don't want to be a Premium member but still want to support us?

Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal

Or Donate anonymously using crypto!

Ethereum

0xfe58350B80634f60Fa6Dc149a72b4DFbc17D341E copy

Bitcoin

3ATGMxNzCUFzxpMCHL5sWSt4DVtS8UqXpi copy

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us on Twitter!

:(