Finland's quiet voice, Sanna's political comeback, ursine headlines, and new citizenship test unveiled

Hello Insiders! 

Last week I sent out a Sunday evening newsletter because there had been so many developments that involved Finland’s place in Europe and the world and I wanted to make sure you were all caught up before the start of the week.

The newsletter actually performed really well! On average about 70% of the people who receive the Finland Insider newsletter open it but last week it was a bit higher. In addition, a few of the regular readers got in touch with me via Bluesky and on email to say they rather liked having the newsletter on a Sunday evening as it recaps the week, and they can be ready for the week ahead. So what does everyone else prefer? Vote below:

Inside Track: Finland, Russia, Ukraine and Donald Trump’s America

There’s been a lot happening this week, with Donald Trump bringing Vladimir Putin in from the cold, offering peace talks (which excluded Ukraine and other European countries), and dangling the prospect of official visits to each other’s capitals among several friendly overtures towards Moscow. Here’s how Finland fits into the bigger picture, and how politicians and media outlets are reacting to events:

🌐 Paris talks. Finland and the other Nordic and Baltic countries were represented by Denmark at talks in Paris last Monday hosted by French President Emmanuel Macron.

☎️ On Tuesday PM Petteri Orpo (NCP) convened a call for the leaders of the other parties in his European Parliament group EPP. They got an overview of the situation from Ursula Von der Leyen, and Orpo said he “raised the need to rapidly increase European defense spending and build deterrence, to build a common European message and to strengthen Ukraine.”

🇫🇷 President Alexander Stubb and PM Orpo were part of a second round of talks hosted by Macron on Wednesday. The pair joined by video conference to discuss the “existential threat” posed by Russia to Europe.

🇺🇦 President Stubb had a call with Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Friday. The pair of course discussed the latest developments: “We discussed Finland's support for Ukraine and possible steps to find a lasting and just solution to Russia's war of aggression” Stubb wrote online.

🇬🇧 Stubb also had a phone call with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer on Saturday. Starmer “began by reiterating the need to secure enduring peace for Ukraine and bring an end to Russia’s illegal war,” according to a very brief read-out of the call. “The leaders agreed the need for Europe to step up support to achieve this, and the Prime Minister said the UK is ready to play a role in future security guarantees.”

🇪🇺 Finnish MEP Mika Aaltola (NCP) - who sits on the European Parliament’s foreign affairs committee; is a former independent presidential candidate and ex-head of the Finnish Institute for International Affairs FIIA - warned this week that Europe had been given a three-week ultimatum by America to accept its terms and conditions for ending the war in Ukraine. Although Aaltola didn’t provide any evidence to support his claims (and his original post on Elon Musk’s X social media platform seem to have now been deleted), there are screen grabs still available:

The story was picked up first by Hufvudstadsbladet, and in later media interviews Aaltola claimed that he heard from “several NATO and EU sources that the United States would give Europe three weeks to agree to peace terms or else the United States would withdraw from Europe.”

🤡 Puppet. Speaking on Yle’s A-Studio programme this week, Finnish Foreign Minister Elina Valtonen said she doesn’t think Donald Trump is Vladimir Putin’s puppet. Which when you think about it, is quite remarkable if you have to specifically come out and say those words aloud!

🌊 Commissioners. A delegation of EU Commissioners was in Helsinki this week for political meetings, and to discuss Baltic Sea cable security - how to stop the damage, how to repair it, how to sanction Russian ‘shadow fleet’ ships and ensure security of supply for electricity and telecommunications in the Baltic Sea. Finland’s EU Commissioner Henna Virkkunen (NCP) was joined by Andrius Kubilius, the Commissioner for Defence and Space, and Magnus Brunner, Commissioner for Home Affairs and Migration.

🔊 Voices. As I mentioned last week, former Finnish PM Sanna Marin (SDP) has been one of the loudest Finnish voices warning about the dangers of the US and Russia teaming up to do an end-run around Ukraine and Europe on a peace deal. She doubled down this week with a feature in The Economist and also speaking at events.

I wrote about it in Sunday’s Helsingin Sanomat newspaper, saying that it might suit Finland’s political leadership - Alex Stubb, Petteri Orpo and Elina Valtonen - that someone else from Finland is speaking out and hitting the headlines. After all, they definitely don’t want to piss off Donald Trump or Elon Musk for many different reasons: they fear a trade war, the threat of targeted sanctions, or that any possible contracts for Finnish shipyards to build ice-breaker ships for the Americans will be cancelled.

But here’s an interesting kernel from Marin at a conference in Stockholm on Friday, when she was asked about a possible return to front-line politics: the ex-SDP politician said she might get back to thinking about a return to politics at a later date. So she left the door slightly ajar as you would expect any canny politician to do. Could she run for president? Quite possibly. Would she want to, and does it pay enough? Those are two other important questions!

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Inside the headlines

🚫 Strikes. A new collective agreement was signed on Sunday for employees in the technology sector, averting strikes which were due to begin on Monday morning. The Pro trade union says the collective agreement of salary increases up to 7.8% lasts for the next three years.

🚔 Car crime. Police in Central Finland have arrested a man suspected of running over three people in the early hours of Saturday morning in the town of Ylöjärvi. The man is suspected of three counts of attempted murder, aggravated endangerment of traffic safety, and aggravated drunk driving. He was arrested on Sunday afternoon. Authorities say the victims do not have life-threatening injuries.

✂️ Cuts. A fresh round of cuts targeting Finland’s elderly population will only be revealed after this spring’s municipal elections, it emerged this week. Minister Kaisa Juuso has reportedly suspended her preparations to slash elderly services and Centre Party leader Antti Kaikkonen is demanding that the minister lays her cards on the table ahead of the vote.

“⁠The government's cuts have already hit elderly services hard. The current direction of elderly care is such that new cuts cannot be tolerated by older people, their loved ones or caregivers. A dignified old age belongs to everyone,” says Kaikkonen.

💉 Drugs. Parliament voted against a bill that would have allowed the establishment of drugs consumption safe rooms in Finland on Friday. The bill was originally part of a citizen’s initiative which gathered signatures from voters. Members of Parliament voted 91-66 to reject the initiative, with 42 MPs absent. From government the National Coalition Party, Finns Party and Christian Democrats voted against the initiative; while the Swedish People’s Party voted in favour of it.

Even a number of MPs who had previously said they were open to the idea of establishing drugs consumption safe rooms - including Foreign Minister Elina Valtonen who had been a strong advocate of the scheme - voted in line with their party against the initiative.

🇫🇮 Test. A new report at the Interior Ministry looks at options to introduce a test for people who want to become Finnish citizens.

"The purpose of the citizenship test would be to measure knowledge of Finnish society and law, basic knowledge of history, culture, politics and geography, and a person's ability to live in [Finnish] society in accordance with the values ​​prevailing here and the requirements of public safety,” the ministry said in a statement.

So if I were you I’d start brushing up on the leading ice hockey goal scorers in the 1998 SM-Liiga because it might just come up in the exam!

🐻 Ursine headlines. The bears at Helsinki’s Korkeasaari Zoo have woken up from their winter hibernation and are now roaming around their enclosure. This is low-key one of my favourite news stories every year!

❄️ Ice, ice, baby. The European Ice Sailing Championships are returning to Finland later this month, for the first time in 20 years. The competitions will be held from 22 February to 1 March at Lake Pyhäjärvi in ​​Säkylä. This year, a record number of Finnish sailors are participating – a total of 20 domestic competitors have registered, and in total over 100 ice sailors from around 15 different countries are heading to the water.

Insider Politics

📊 Poll. The latest public opinion poll on voting intentions was published by Helsingin Sanomat this week and it shows the Social Democrats consolidating their lead at the top up to 24.5% while the National Coalition Party is down to 21.9%. In third place the Finns Party has fallen to 14.3% and in fourth place the Centre Party is up at 13.2%.

👉 Far-right politics. I didn’t have space to include this in last weekend’s newsletter but it’s a curious thing. The National Coalition Party’s Joutsa branch in eastern Finland organised a public event outside the town’s S-Market supermarket earlier in February. There were meatballs and mash, cake and coffee on offer (which frankly sounds delicious!) but the curious thing was that Kokoomus was holding the event in cooperation with the far-right Finns Party and Vapauden Liitto. Since Kokoomus and Persut are in government together we can overlook that for now. But if you haven’t heard about the Vapauden Liitto - Freedom Alliance in English - before, here’s a primer: They’re anti-NATO and anti-EU, against “immigration and multiculturalism”, and against the green transition. And they only splintered off from another extreme right-wing party because they were thought to be too close to Russia…

“The event showed that working together is fun”, Joutsa Kokoomus wrote on Facebook afterwards, so what is the National Coalition Party doing sharing a platform with them?

Well, I reached out to Kokoomus during the week to ask exactly that question but did not get any reply from the press office. On Saturday public broadcaster Yle and Ilta-Sanomat newspaper picked up the story, with Kokoomus Party Secretary Timo Elo saying there were no specific guidelines about hosting events in cooperation with other parties.

🔵 Kokoomus. A candidate for the National Coalition Party in spring’s municipal elections has been exposed for siding with Russia when some of her social media posts were uncovered. The Pori candidate wrote that “Ukraine's borders have never been officially confirmed. It has always been part of Russia,” and also shared other pro-Kremlin content posted by a TV astrologer. The candidate was asked about her social media accounts by Iltalehti but said she wanted to keep her personal views and her political work separate.

🟢 Green. The leader of Finland’s Greens Sofia Virta says that if her party finishes a credible fourth in the spring’s municipal elections - beating the Finns Party - it will throw the government coalition into disarray.

Finland International

🇺🇦 Monday marks three years since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine and one senior Finnish politician says now is the time for the EU to “shift into high gear.”

Miapetra Kumpula-Natri, the SDP representative on Parliament’s Grand Committee, says “that would mean quick and immediate action to continue to support Ukraine and also a commitment to strengthening the EU and new, deeper international connections.”

 🇲🇦 Blocked. A Finnish MEP was among three European politicians blocked from entering Western Sahara by Morocco this week. Jussi Saramo (Left) and two Spanish MEPs were stopped from flying to Western Sahara, a largely self-governing territory in northwest Africa occupied by Morocco. The group was flown instead to the Canary Islands.

“Morocco does not want us to see the human rights abuses they are committing in their illegally occupied Western Sahara,” Saramo wrote on Bluesky.

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And finally…

📺 Look, let’s put the cat on the table here and say Finns have some very peculiar tastes when it comes to food - I’m looking at you, salmiakki and mämmi! - but something I saw on Instagram this week was particularly gross. Would you eat a Snickle? It’s the brainchild of chef-slash-content-creator Lauri Kaivoluoto who thinks it’s perfectly acceptable (and tasty) to sandwich a Snickers chocolate bar between two halves of a gherkin. Decide for yourselves:

Thank you, kiitos, tack!

🙏 OK there we are, at the end, big sigh of relief! There was a lot to get through this week but remember if you get overwhelmed by the news, if you find yourself too anxious watching TV news updates or you’re doom-scrolling the latest on social media just switch off, take your brain for a walk in the fresh air, disconnect from the horrible news around us. It will really help, trust me on this!

Thanks for reading and see you next Sunday evening. Yes, we’ll keep experimenting with Sundays for a while and see how it goes.

David