Thread by @Mylovanov

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