Tymofiy Mylovanov Profile picture
Sep 13, 2025 15 tweets 5 min read Read on X
Q: Where is Russia going?

President of Finland, Stubb: It's not looking good. With the current regime and President Putin, I don't see a big change.

Nations that don't have a capacity to deal with their past have a very difficult time looking into the future. 1/
Stubb: This's imperialist DNA and an undertone in Russia that doesn't seem to go away.

Russia is built on empire. That's why Putin talks about the “Russkiy Mir,” the great Russia borders of the 18th cent, with one language, religion, and leader. 2/
Stubb: I'm not very hopeful about the future of Russia.

We thought that Russia and many other countries would just automatically revert to liberal democracy, but it didn't happen. 3/
Q: What made you go back to politics?

President of Finland, Stubb: Putin.

Had Russia not attacked Ukraine, I would not have run for president of Finland. 4/
Q: You grew up in an era where globalization was an opportunity, and now people are looking more inwards.

Stubb: True, but I was born into the Cold War, where there was a clear ideological split between the East and the West, authoritarian regimes and freedom. 5/
Stubb: When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, there was a basic assumption that the whole world was going to be a combination of liberal democracy, social market economy, and globalization. 6/
Stubb: But the turning point was not only 9/11 or the 2008 financial crisis but also Russia's attack on Ukraine in 2022.

We're now starting to see the change of a world order. 7/
Stubb: Power politics is back, fears of interest are back, and Russian imperialism is not gone, start adjusting.

We're living in a 1918, 1945, or 1989 moment in world history. We just don't know where the world is going to go. 8/
Stubb: A lot of Eastern European countries were right about Russia.

But we were all in the wave that Russia and China are going to become democracies. Technological advancement and freedom, people were expected to use it. 9/
Stubb: We want to deal with a world that we want to see, not with a world that actually exists.

Right now the pendulum is going towards transaction, nationalism, and bilateral relations. 10/
Stubb: We have to avoid the polarization of society. We're seeing some of it in the U.S., but not only there.

Finland is a small country, we can't have that. 11/
Stubb: The better you prepare, the less likely you're going to end up in a war.

We have 280k men and women who can be put at wartime, 62 F-18s, long-range missiles, and 64 F-35s.

We have the biggest artillery, larger than France and Germany combined. 12/
Q: The rest of Europe is not prepared?

Stubb: Many of them are. Many of them are waking up. We are increasing our preparedness in order to avoid the worst. 13/
Stubb on diplomacy: When I was with President Xi, I felt we had a very good and respectful conversation.

When I was playing golf with President Trump, we had a really good time. 14/
Stubb: I had a private dinner with President Zelenskyy and Olena Zelenska and my wife, Susanne.

Someone like Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who's gone through a war that no one wanted, and he is a normal human being. There's no glamour. 15X

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More from @Mylovanov

Feb 17
Hodges: Nobody believes that if Russia gets that last bit of Donbas they will be satisfied and stop.

I’ve listened to Putin, Medvedev. They haven’t backed down on anything. Why should anybody think that’s all they wanted? 1/
Hodges: I can’t imagine Putin admitting his war was a huge mistake. Maybe people say, “You are destroying us.” Or maybe he doesn’t know what’s going on.

For years we were told the ex-KGB officer is smart, playing three-dimensional chess. If he doesn’t know, that’s his fault. 2/
Hodges: Casualties don’t matter to Putin. What matters is whether he can stay in power and whether the economy can generate enough money to keep the war going.

That’s why destroying Russia’s oil and gas infrastructure is a good strategy. 3/
Read 7 tweets
Feb 16
At Munich Security Conference world leaders declared post-1945 world order is dead — Ray Dalio.

Merz: "The world order as it has stood for decades no longer exists. We are in a period of great power politics. Freedom is no longer a given". 1/ Image
Macron: Europe's old security structures tied to previous world order don't exist. Europe must prepare for war.

Rubio: We are in a new geopolitics era because the old world is gone. 2/
Ray Dalio: We are in Stage 6 part of the Big Cycle in which there is great disorder arising from a period where there are no rules, might is right, and there is a clash of great powers.

This is the stage where international relations follow the law of the jungle. 3/
Read 12 tweets
Feb 16
Russia's foreign intelligence service planned military coup in Senegal.

Leaked documents show Moscow recruited local military figures to seize power and prepared political and logistical support for new regime — United24. 1/ Image
After Prigozhin's death, Russia brought Wagner under direct control of foreign intelligence service.

76 internal documents from 2023-2024 show transfer of Wagner's assets to state structures. Key figures include Sergei Mashkevich, Sergei Klyukin, Artem Gorny. 2/
Russia created "African Political Science" with $750K monthly budget.

Uses St. Petersburg offices to coordinate operations in 30+ countries. Organization divided into political operations for lobbying and media operations for manipulative social media content. 3/
Read 8 tweets
Feb 16
Andrey Kurkov, Ukrainian writer: Nobody’s winning in Russia-Ukraine war.

Trump wants to be a winner and look like a peacemaker, but he’s a business dealer. He wants a deal with Russia, and Ukraine is an obstacle to restarting joint oil projects and profits. 1/
Kurkov: I feel like I spent already half of my life in war. Now it became part of daily life and lottery. You never know who will be killed tomorrow by Russians.

You just live one day at a time, hoping to survive till the next year, but with no guarantee. 2/
Kurkov: This winter became the main enemy — it allied with Russia.

Not sleeping because of explosions is one thing, not sleeping because of the cold is another. With no heating, you go to bed with plastic bottles filled with boiled water. It isn’t good for your health. 3/
Read 8 tweets
Feb 16
Bolton: It was a mistake not pressing earlier to admit Belarus, Ukraine and Moldova to NATO. We absorbed eastern Europe for one reason — space.

Every country pushed the front line closer. We failed to close the gap and Ukraine, Moldova and Belarus were left in a gray zone. 1/
Bolton: The French and the Germans objected Ukraine and Georgia in NATO. Ukraine is an incredibly rich powerful country striving to be Western, rejecting the nationalism of Putin.

It was closely related to our vital interest in the peace and stability of other NATO members. 2/
Bolton: We don't have a national security decision-making process anymore. Trump has proposed a $500 billion increase in the defense budget. Great, but we are behind.

Communist China is becoming a peer nuclear competitor. In a tripolar nuclear world, none of treaties work. 3X
Read 5 tweets
Feb 16
A mine tore off his foot. He tightened a tourniquet and crawled six hours under FPV drones to stay alive.

This is “Keks,” a fighter from Ukraine’s 144th Special Operations Center. — Ukrainska Pravda 1/ Image
At 05:00 he moved out with three comrades. High grass covered the trail. He stepped on a Soviet-designed “petal” mine.

The blast shredded his foot. He tried to run, collapsed twice, then dragged himself to a tree for cover. 2/
A teammate on his first combat mission tightened the tourniquet.

Keks handed over his machine gun, gave orders, and told the group to move ahead while he crawled behind them. FPVs hunted overhead. Mortars struck nearby. 3/
Read 11 tweets

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