Finland’s prime minister says Europe without the US is not strong enough to stand up to Russia
Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin on Friday produced a less than rosy assessment of Europe’s ability to deal with Russia. On a visit to Australia, the leader of the candidate country for NATO membership emphasized that Russia’s invasion and occupation of neighboring Ukraine revealed Europe’s weaknesses and strategic mistakes in front of Moscow.
“I have to be very honest (…) with you Europe is not strong enough at the moment, we would be in trouble without the US”she pointed to the Lowy Institute, a Sydney-based think tank.
Mme Marin insisted that Ukraine should be helped by “everyone means”adding that the United States has played a central role in providing Kiev with the weapons, financial resources and humanitarian aid needed to halt Russia’s advance.
“We need to make sure that we also strengthen these capabilities in terms of European defense, European defense industry and that we can deal with different types of situations”she recommended.
She criticized Europe’s past naivety in relation to Vladimir Putin’s Russia. “For a long time, Europe has been building a strategy towards Russia to tighten our economic ties, to buy energy from Russia… We thought it would prevent a war”but this approach proved to be “totally bad”criticized M.me Navy. “They don’t care about economic ties, they don’t care about sanctions. They don’t care about any of that. »
Finland gained independence from Russia almost a hundred and five years ago, and although severely underarmed, it inflicted heavy losses on the invading Soviet army soon after.