00:00Finnish Foreign Minister Voltonen, thank you so much for talking to us.
00:04I would like to get your reaction to what the Russian Foreign Minister said at the G20
00:09Foreign Minister's meeting here.
00:10I quote him through Ukraine, NATO and the EU have declared war on Russia and are directly
00:14participating in it.
00:16What's your reaction?
00:17Well, that's utterly false, of course.
00:19Well, first of all, it is Russia who has been waging war against Ukraine since 2014.
00:26And the full scale invasion started three and a half years ago.
00:30And also concretely, the world knows that President Zelensky, Ukraine has been ready for a ceasefire,
00:36has been ready for negotiations.
00:38But on the very contrary, what does Russia?
00:41Well, not only do they continue their fight on the battlefield, but they have been specifically
00:49targeting civilians with drone attacks and with missile attacks.
00:55really increasing the pressure on the entire Ukrainian society, deporting children, which
01:02is a massive war crime, of course.
01:06So we know who is guilty.
01:08And at the same time, Russia unfortunately seems to be waging a hybrid war also against the rest
01:15of the world and not only in Europe.
01:18Here, I've been speaking to quite so many African colleagues of mine and everybody's worried
01:24about Russia's actions in Sahel, in Western Africa, where they are not only supporting military
01:30coups, but also spreading misinformation, disinformation to destabilize societies.
01:37We've seen Russian drones in Polish airspace, Russian jets violating Estonian airspace.
01:44What does that mean for Finland, considering that you have this really long border to Russia
01:48and our direct neighbors from there?
01:50Well, I guess Finland never has had any illusions about Russia.
01:56Of course, we have also in our past tried to engage with them.
02:00At the same time, we have always been prepared for the fact that they might be a threat, not
02:05just to us, but the rest of us as well.
02:08So Finland has always invested very heavily in defense and deterrence.
02:13What we do see now is that Russia not only has the capability, but also the will to threaten, basically, every
02:22country in the world who is dedicated to offering democracy and freedom to their people.
02:30So now is really the time that the freedom-loving world sticks together and makes everything necessary
02:39for sustainable peace in Ukraine, but also for containing Russia's aggression.
02:46Ahead of this high-level week, you said international relations must be built on rules, not on brute force.
02:52We had Ukrainian President Zelenskyy addressing the UN General Assembly, saying that not only allies
02:56are important, but also weapons. Do you agree with that, as he criticized weak international
03:02organizations of not being able to end not only this war, but several conflicts around the world?
03:09Unfortunately, dealing with an imperialist power like Russia, diplomacy hardly helps.
03:16We have tried it for so many years, even though we saw increasingly that Russia, again, in the
03:26past 20 years, was attempting to become a true military threat with Georgia, with Crimea, and all this.
03:37Still, we in the West, we always gave the hand to Russia and said, let's sit down, let's try, you know, diplomacy.
03:46Nothing worked. They just kept on advancing. Unfortunately, it seems to be the case that Russia
03:52only understands military power and, of course, also looking at their economy, they won't be able
04:00to sustain this war machine for too long. Unfortunately, still for the time being, and the Russian population
04:06is deprived of all their freedoms, so they can't even vote against, right? So the economy is not going
04:13to collapse tomorrow. But of course, in the medium term already, and especially in the long term, that will be
04:19a massive problem to Russia. But anyway, diplomacy is good. But at the same time, we need to have
04:26credible, credible deterrence and defend, defense, so that we can basically force Russia to negotiate
04:33and engage in diplomacy. Finnish foreign minister, Elina Walton, and thank you so much for talking to us.
04:38Thank you so much. Thank you.
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