Finnish News Recap, Week 20: Sanna's Speech edition

Governmental negotiations are plodding onwards, but nothing interesting happened last week. Probably the most “consequential” news last week was that the negotiators consider limiting the use of smartphones at schools. Thus, other news took precedence.

SANNA’S SPEECH: Sanna Marin, still technically a prime minister, flew to United States to address the NYU 2023 graduating class. Such honors rarely (if ever?) are given to Finnish politicians, or Finns in general, so naturally this would have been major news no matter what was said. It might not be Harvard or Yale but still carries considerable prestige and influence.

The speech itself concentrated for the most part on you-can-do-anything, it’s-time-to-take-charge rhetoric that is probably to be expected from such affairs. However, in Finland, probably the most locally discussed part of the address was Marin’s comment that when it comes to things like gender politics or human rights, or the Russian invasion, “all these questions are battles of values. And we all must take a side in that battle. There is no middle ground.”  

Even though the most direct implication here concerned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, many of course interpret this in the sense of right-wing victory in Finland and the participation of the right-wing populist Finns Party in the government negotiations, the said party having challenged human rights treaties on many occasions.

In general, there’s a considerable disdain of *anything* smacking of us against their rhetoric (internally, not externally! It is quite clear currently that there are Us here and Them over the eastern border, as the next part spells out) within Finnish elite circles. Finnish society is fundamentally consensus-seeking and will probably continue to be in the future, too.

RUSSIAN TROUBLES: It was widely predicted that Russia would begin disruptive measures, even hybrid warfare, during the runup to Finland’s NATO membership in hopes of scaring Finns off the track. Numerous Very Serious Commentators continuously banged the drum about keeping a cool head and not fearing any attempts at influence. Most people didn’t appear to need these reminders – the experts continuously seemed like they were trying to convince themselves to not be scared.

Few if any of such operations turned up during the process, but after Finland’s NATO membership was approved, the Russian relations have (predictably) turned quite a bit frostier than before. The beginning of May, Russia froze the Finnish embassy’s bank accounts, forcing them to use cash, and electricity. The Russians, of course, blamed Finland and the collective West for these operations.

Meanwhile, border guards have begun annulling Finnish visas. According to Yle, Most people turned back were heading to Russia for refueling or shopping trips, which Russian authorities say is against the rules.

Of course, at this point, events like these are just a given at this point and arouse little concern, apart from several politicians and other commentators wondering loudly why Finland hasn’t still frozen the Russian embassy’s bank accounts and why there are still people intent on visiting Russia, anyway. This reflects how people are setting into a new reality where war in Ukraine and conflict with Russia is just a background event while other things are at fore.

IN OTHER NEWS, a Finnish air force training jet crashed, the Finnish hockey federation faces criticism over sanctioning a coach for interrupting a game over racist shouting, the energy crisis seems to be firmly over as Olkiluoto 3 now produces so much power that electricity prices briefly turned negative, the Finnish Eurovision almost-winner Käärijä organized a big concert that was livestreamed.

Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Sanna_Marin_in_2023#/media/File:Sanna_Marin_-_NYU_2023_Commencement.jpg