I wanted to share with you several quotes from the interview of President Alexander Stubb of Finland to Peter Hartcher from The Sydney Morning Herald.

Ukraine is very grateful to the people and leadership of Finland for standing firmly with Ukrainians!

◾ "Within the next five to 10 years, two things will hold true with Russia. One is that they will not revert into a peaceful liberal democracy. And second, they will continue a military build-up."

◾ "When the war ends in Ukraine, which it will at some stage, you have to ask yourself the question – where do you put the 1.2 million soldiers? Some will retire, some will do something else, but still there will be bases. And where will Russia build those bases? Of course, they will build them [along the Finnish border] and send them there."

◾ @alexstubb considers Putin a strategic fool and a military failure, adding: "I don't think he will test Article 5 [of a NATO Treaty]."

◾ "What I would argue is that it [Putin's war] is the biggest tactical and strategic mistake in modern history because he set out to pacify Ukraine; it's going to become a member of the European Union, and eventually NATO. He set out to dismantle NATO. Well, he just doubled the border with NATO through Russia with Finland. He set out to destroy the transatlantic partnership. Well, together we're now hiking up our defence expenditure to 5% [of GDP over 10 years]. He set out to dismantle the EU. Well, I've never seen it more united. So Putin failed on all accounts."
https://x.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1943963010818535588