---
title: "Ukraine Special — Sami Miettinen on Ivan Puopolo's Viisasteluklubi"
titleOriginal: "Viikon viisasteluklubi / Ukraina-spesiaali / Miettinen-Sammallahti-Puopolo"
description: "Sami Miettinen, Tere Sammallahti and host Ivan Puopolo recorded the day after Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine began: what the balance of forces actually looked like, why Russia advanced without air supremacy, whether SWIFT exclusion or targeted bank sanctions bite harder, and the Finnish NATO question at the moment it stopped being theoretical."
format: "podcast"
show: "Viikon viisasteluklubi"
episode: "Ukraina-spesiaali"
hosts: ["Ivan Puopolo"]
date: 2022-02-25
duration: "52:06"
language: "fi"
original: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PH44tPT2DOg
relatedEpisode: https://www.neuvottelija.com/podcast/episodes/ep150-sanna-marinin-synkat-pilvet-ivan-puopolo/
canonical: https://www.neuvottelija.com/media/viisasteluklubi-ukraine-special/
---

# Ukraine Special — Sami Miettinen on Ivan Puopolo's Viisasteluklubi

Sami Miettinen joined **Viikon viisasteluklubi** — Ivan Puopolo's panel, with Tere
Sammallahti as the third regular — on 25 February 2022, the day after Russia's
full-scale invasion of Ukraine began. It is a contemporaneous record rather than a
retrospective, and reads as one: the participants are working out what has just
happened while it is still happening.

The military reading holds up reasonably well against what followed. Ukraine is not a
small country at 43 million people, but its materiel is dated and its air defence weak —
which makes it genuinely strange, Sami argues, that Russia went in without establishing
air supremacy first. Belarus turned out to be the piece of luck Putin needed, giving him
a staging ground he did not have before. A Spetsnaz strike on an airfield was repelled
and the field retaken. The panel's conclusion is that the outcome is not obvious at all;
the open questions are how long it takes, and whether it hurts ordinary Russians enough
to matter politically.

On sanctions the argument is impatient with the choice being framed as a choice. If
excluding Russia from SWIFT bites and targeted bank sanctions bite, why pick one? Nord
Stream 2 being halted draws an aside that Paavo Lipponen might now concede the project
was a mistake. And on Finland, the panel is blunt about a defence minister who could not
say whether readiness had been raised, and about a debate in which one party held an
official NATO position. The counter-argument they keep returning to is that Finland
already has the most NATO-compatible equipment anywhere and a defence budget larger than
several member states — everything except the treaty, and a very long border with the
country doing the invading.

The last third turns to information and money: Russia forcing an Estonian operator to
take down a page, a state too poor to build a working information dictatorship, whether
the Russian-speaking minority in Finland becomes a target for misplaced anger, and
whether a 40–50% index drop is a buying opportunity. It closes on Jokerit and the KHL.

## Chapters

- **00:00** — Why this week's episode is a different kind of special
- **03:00** — Ukraine's size and materiel; Belarus as the staging ground
- **06:00** — The airfield strike repelled; how long, and does it hurt Russians
- **09:00** — EU statements versus what Putin actually weighs; Nord Stream 2 halted
- **12:00** — SWIFT exclusion or targeted bank sanctions — why choose
- **15:00** — Finnish readiness, and a defence minister who would not answer
- **18:00** — NATO-compatible equipment, the budget, and the border
- **21:00** — Putin's shifting justifications: denazification or NATO enlargement
- **24:00** — Donbas: human-rights violations, and what "genocide" is being made to mean
- **27:00** — Not self-restricting at the border; the parties and the NATO debate
- **30:00** — Case-by-case assessment, and asking everyone to drop the old positions
- **33:00** — Belarus has no options; Xi taking notes on how annexation goes
- **36:00** — Russia forces an Estonian operator to remove a page; VPNs and a leaky censor
- **39:00** — The Russian-speaking minority in Finland, and misplaced anger
- **42:00** — Markets: a 40–50% drop, buying the dip, and the bounce-back
- **45:00** — Does social media matter? Parties and multinationals act on it
- **48:00** — Jokerit, the KHL and who owns the brand
- **51:00** — Should politicians block a hockey team; closing

**The recording lives on Ivan Puopolo's own channel and he owns it.** This page is a
record of the appearance and a pointer to the original, not a copy of it. The chapter
titles above are derived from the recording; the episode carries no published chapter
marks of its own.

Both of the other participants have appeared on the Neuvottelija channel: Ivan Puopolo in
[Sanna Marin's darkening clouds](https://www.neuvottelija.com/podcast/episodes/ep150-sanna-marinin-synkat-pilvet-ivan-puopolo/)
and Tere Sammallahti in
[Taxation, the Laffer curve and Libera](https://www.neuvottelija.com/podcast/episodes/ep32-verotus-lafferin-kayra-ja-libera-tere-sammallahti/).

Original recording (Viikon viisasteluklubi): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PH44tPT2DOg

From the same session: https://www.neuvottelija.com/podcast/episodes/ep150-sanna-marinin-synkat-pilvet-ivan-puopolo/

---

Cite as: Sami Miettinen, guest on Viikon viisasteluklubi Ukraina-spesiaali — Ukraine Special — Sami Miettinen on Ivan Puopolo's Viisasteluklubi, 2022-02-25, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PH44tPT2DOg. Record: https://www.neuvottelija.com/media/viisasteluklubi-ukraine-special/.