Finnish News Recap, week 34: Debt Strikes Back edition

DEBT-FILLED BUDGET: The government has presented the proposal for its first budget. The process has been led by Finance Minister Riikka Purra, this being her first major task that doesn’t involve navigating the racism scandal or internal government squabbling.

On its face, the budget is more moderate than expected. It introduces a slew of cuts (budget and tax cuts), but that’s not the most notable thing about it. No, probably the thing leading to the most discussion is that, after all the promises of cutting debt and solving Finland from the previous government’s claimed debt disaster, the new budget contains a 10-billion-euro deficit per year.

In other words, the government will take the same amount of new annual debt as Marin’s government. It’s worth underlining here to what degree the new government’s parties, particularly National Coalition, fought the last election on the platform of there being a looming debt disaster on the horizon and them being the only ones able to avert it, somehow.

This has led to much mockery. Cutting debt was the one thing they were supposed to do, according to their promises! Well, that and cut various taxes – this they have included in their budget, which of course just makes the questions about their supposed fiscal discipline louder.

The government, and its online supporters, have defended themselves by saying that it’s all due to the actions of the Marin’s government (of course – what government on Earth hasn’t blamed the previous government for all the actions it has or hasn’t done, despite promises), as well as asked whether this means that the opposition parties are now striving for even bigger cuts now.

It doesn’t mean that, of course. Pointing out that there’s a great discrepancy between the government parties’ pre-election speechifying and the current reality does not, as such, require actions in any direction.

We’re still in a period of crises. Covid may be over (fingers crossed), but the Ukrainian war is still going on (as the next section illustrates) and climate change will present problems of its own kind. All sorts of black swans might suddenly fly into the horizon. These have already required taking new debt and might well require taking even more of it. The least one could expect, then, is a bit of honesty about it.

RUSSIAN MILITANTS: While the war in Ukraine may not be getting quite as much attention as previously due to a low amount of map lines moving and so on (though maybe that’s changing, if some of the Ukrainian breakthrough rumors are correct?), it is of course an omnipresent presence in Finnish daily affairs in various ways. Numerous small stories from the past week keep confirming this.

Perhaps most dramatically, the Finnish police arrested Voislav Torden, formerly known as Jan Petrovskiy, a member of the far-right Rusich Battalion, whose members have been fighting on the Russian side in East Ukraine. Ukrainians are demanding Torden/Petrovskiy’s extradition for suspected terrorism.

Torden’s arrest, of course, is a reminder that extreme right battalions are a presence on the Russian side of the war as much as Ukraine’s (and have been for the duration of the war since 2014). Torden/Petrovskiy may have had connections to the local Finnish extreme right (like Soldiers of Odin) as well, though probably not major ones, simply since the pro-Russian sector of the Finnish deep-end set is small and, well, does not exactly consist of the most stable operators people available.

Of course some are asking how this guy could have made his way to Finland in the first place, whether this calls for more border security measures and whether it was wise for Finland to take in the Russian asylum seekers (he wasn’t one) that were taken in before the new border wall and accompanying measures entered into force, but hey, at least he *was* caught. The Rusich battalion has apparently stated they’ll stop fighting until the Russian state makes efforts to get Torden/Petrovskiy back, which, from a Finnish perspective, is just a cherry on the top.

Not directly connected to this development, various Finnish leaders repeated that they continue to support Ukraine on Ukrainian Independence Day, Finland is sending a new package of military aid to Ukraine, and PM Orpo (while visiting Ukraine) toyed with the idea of producing “Pasi” APC’s, a mainstay of Finnish defense industry, as a part of a deal with Ukraine.

IN OTHER NEWS, a Finnish athlete won a medal (bronze) in European Championships for the first time in ages and electricity prices are momentarily spiking again due to the OL2 unclear plant being out of service, a recession looms, and a National Coalition MP is in hot water after an interview widely interpreted as mocking the poor (and another interview indicating she just might possibly have started her juice business with tax-evasion cash).

Image source: https://www.picpedia.org/clipboard/debt.html