Jussi Halla-aho @Halla_aho@respublicae.eu
Unofficial automated mirror. No copyright asserted. ∎ Kansanedustaja / Member of Parliament
We/us/our
Joined Apr 2022
6/8 For anything to change, the comfort must be taken away from the masses. It was the economic misery that brought down both the Emperor in 1917 and the Soviet regime in 1991.
5/8 The Russian autocracy is built on a silent agreement between the Kremlin and the middle class: "You do not interfere in the politics, and we give you material prosperity."
4/8 It is, after all, the Buryats, Kalmyks and other minorities that do most of the dying for the restoration of the "Russkiy mir", not the middle class of Moscow or St Petersburg.
3/8 They can simultaneously enjoy the national euphoria over destroyed Ukrainian cities and mutilated enemy soldiers AND spend their time safely and comfortably in Western countries.
2/8 Firstly, he tickles the primitive instincts of the majority: Russia's messianic mission, paranoia and siege-mentality, "lost" glory and greatness.
Secondly, the Russians themselves have not significantly suffered from Mr Putin's rule.
1/8 Mr Ilves's criticism is not unjustified or without merit. Mr Putin and his genocidal war in Ukraine are hugely popular among ordinary Russians. Putin is popular for (the combination of) two reasons:
RT @ilvestoomas: While Finland dithers on Russia, it had no problems in a lightening decision to immediately shut entry to Estonians during Covid.
So I assume there’s more to this dithering than July vacations at the mökki. https://w…
@PasiJarvinen1 @quukkeli @TrentTelenko My own recollection is that I became party leader in 2017.
@PasiJarvinen1 @quukkeli @TrentTelenko Just out of curiosity: When and where have I opposed the sanctions?
My own recollection is that I called for stronger sanctions long before the invasion.
@JussiPullinen Kiitoksia. Kysyn kuitenkin, millaisena näet median roolin syvällisemmän keskustelun edistäjänä? Nähdäkseni siitä tehdään helposti uutinen, jos esim. pm kertoo "ajatustensa olevan Butšassa". Sen sijaan pohtivammista puheenvuoroista ei välttämättä kuulla yhtä paljon.
20/20 We should also ask ourselves: Even if we do not really care about the future of Ukraine per se, can we afford to lose this battle after everything we have invested so far to win it?
19/20 Conclusion: We must stop asking the invader what kind of and how much aid we should provide to his victim. We must give to Ukraine everything we can to help them stop the invasion. And then we must do some serious thinking on how to incentivize Mr Putin to make peace.
18/20 Mr Putin is in his essence a bully who despises the weak and the small but has a lot of respect for strength. He is not a kind of person who would start or even risk a war with his peers.
17/20 Mr Putin may run out of modern weaponry but he has endless stores of vintage equipment and ammunition that is sufficient for continuing a war of attrition forever. He has no incentive to stop the war, as the rest of the world has made it clear that they will not intervene.
16/20 Mr Putin, like Stalin, does not have to care about his image abroad or his popularity at home. Anyway, the majority of the Russian population is zombified and wants war, regardless of its consequences for others or even themselves.
15/20 We will never know if UK and France would indeed have joined the fight. But Stalin certainly took that possibility seriously and this is what matters. If they had repeatedly declared that they will under no circumstances intervene, our world would probably look different.
14/20 Stalin made peace because of the growing and imminent threat that the Western powers, UK and France, would intervene and send troops to Finland. (They had their own reasons to plan that, but this is irrelevant.) That would have meant a war Stalin could not afford.
13/20 The disparity in resources was so gigantic that sooner or later we would have run out of men and material. Stalin could absorb his losses much better than Finland could. We were on the brink of collapse in March 1940.
12/20 The war in Ukraine has very many similarities with the "Winter War" of 1939-1940. The Red Army suffered horrible losses but this did not decide the outcome of the war. Stalin did not make peace in March 1940 because of having been beaten on the ground.
11/20 One should, nonetheless, consider the consequences of a declarational non-intervention, on the one hand, and of keeping that possibility open, on the other.
10/20 In the spirit of not making the same mistake twice, I will not make such a proposal again. I totally understand why nobody wants to intervene, and it would be politically much more difficult to do so now, after all the declarations that I referred to above.
Unofficial automated mirror. No copyright asserted. ∎ Kansanedustaja / Member of Parliament
We/us/our
Joined Apr 2022
