Finland’s Prime Minister says Europe without US is not strong enough to stand up to Russia
Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin on Friday drew up a less than rosy assessment of Europe’s capabilities to deal with Russia. On visit to Australia, the leader of the candidate country for NATO membership stressed that the invasion and occupation of neighboring Ukraine by Russia exposed the weaknesses and strategic errors of Europe 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 United States”she pointed to the Lowy Institute, a Sydney-based think tank.
Mme Marin insisted that Ukraine should be helped by ” all means “adding that the United States has played a central role in supplying kyiv with the weapons, financial means and humanitarian aid necessary to halt the advance of Russia.
“We have to make sure that we are also strengthening these capabilities in terms of European defence, European defense industry and that we can deal with different types of situations”she recommended.
She criticized Europe’s past naivety in dealing with Vladimir Putin’s Russia. “For a long time, Europe has built a strategy vis-à-vis Russia to tighten our economic ties, to buy energy from Russia… We thought that would prevent a war”but this approach turned out to be “totally bad”criticized M.me Marin. “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 nearly one hundred and five years ago and, although vastly underarmed, inflicted heavy casualties on the invading Soviet army soon after.