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Alright, welcome to the Neuvottelija channel. Pekka Toveri, this must be

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your sixth time, is that right? Yeah. So we got off to a good start right after this

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brutal Russian war of aggression, back in March

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[Music] 2022. And now you've either

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written a very well-timed book, or a book that's aged badly in your hands, because you have to

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So, Pekka Toveri: On the Ukraine War, just came off the press. Well, I have to

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remember - the book focuses quite a lot on how we ended up in the war,

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how the war has been fought so far, what lessons can be learned from it, because at the end

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there's only a brief look at these possible peace negotiations, so

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most of it is still pretty much up to date, yeah. And you're referring now

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here to how the Ukraine peace negotiations have moved really

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fast because of the Trump administration. And this will probably go out of date the moment

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it's in your hands. But as we're recording this, Ukraine is about to go to America,

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Zelenskyi is about to sign the minerals deal, and Britain's

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Prime Minister Keir Starmer is probably going to negotiate

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boots on the ground, that is, using European troops there

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for Ukraine's security guarantees. So what's your gut feeling here - is this

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Trump's game landing happily, or what could still go wrong? Well,

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quite a lot could still go wrong, because

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a lot is happening, really, in how Trump is handling these things, so

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it looks like the Americans, the Trump administration, don't really have any

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clear plan for what to actually do here. And it seems like they go in

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at full speed, throwing out incredible, tough demands

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and then immediately cave the moment there's even a little

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resistance. And there are still many things wide open here, like what

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the Russians will say. Let's just say the good thing is that something is being done

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instead of - unlike the Biden administration, which just kept repeating that we

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'll support Ukraine for as long as it takes,' which isn't really a strategy.

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That's a strategy of bleeding Ukraine dry. Now at least there's an attempt to get

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the fighting to stop, some kind of peace - that's a positive

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thing. And of course right at the start there were a lot of

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shocking things, like basically appeasing Russia, essentially feeding

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into Russia's hands time after time without Russia having to give anything back

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- it started to look bad, this - this minerals deal. Well,

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first of all, it's of course pretty outrageous

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that you'd start extracting from a country at war, that's fighting

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for its very existence. But on the other hand, if the United States

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secures certain interests for itself in Ukraine, then of course

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in a sense that's also pushing the Russians back a bit, like

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'hey, this is our thing, don't come in here.' But like I said,

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this is still entirely - the negotiations haven't

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really started yet, and there are so many things to sort out that it's

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impossible to say where this ends up in the end, because the big question

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is still completely unresolved, one that hasn't even really been discussed properly yet

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- and that is, where do we get Ukrainian security guarantees, credible security guarantees, so

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that the peace actually has some chance of succeeding. Yeah, in my opinion

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the best scenario would be - I mean, this minerals deal isn't necessarily that

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bad. I mean, Finland doesn't get much either from mineral extraction, then,

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in compensation. But here there's still this clear

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joint venture - a commercial 50-50 split - and still, they'll have to

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build the mineral extraction capability there, it doesn't exist yet, so this isn't

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some purely colonialist deal, like it first looked.

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But if the Yanks take a really transactional approach to this, they

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just take the commercial angle, don't really give any security guarantees either, and then

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put it on the Europeans to give those guarantees - then this

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Nato European branch - how capable is it,

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I mean if you just take the Americans out of the picture, would we manage against

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the Russians? Well, you have to remember that if we're talking about Europe's

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defence, then those forces are 95% European forces

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that would actually be used for that defence here. But our challenge is

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that if Nato went to war tomorrow, the key shared

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capabilities - strategic air surveillance, strategic

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air-to-air refueling capability, intelligence, surveillance, command, targeting, long

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range strike capability - those come from the Americans, and

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Americans hold significant

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positions in those command structures, so if these capabilities aren't there, then

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waging war gets quite a bit more challenging. It's not impossible, though, yeah -

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for example Finland still has plans and capability

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for how to defend Finland. We still have the ability to lead all

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the Defence Forces' fighting in Finland. But leading the bigger overall picture

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would become more challenging. So there are then many different options -

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like, say Trump says we're pulling ground troops out of here and the air force

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out of here too - like I said, those don't actually represent that small a share of

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the military capability to fight. But if we still support

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the Americans in the command structure and they keep doing their jobs, and

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intelligence, surveillance, and command capabilities are still available, then in the end it

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wouldn't change things all that dramatically. Yeah, and now this is of course a kind of

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wake-up call. I mean, Finland has always been awake to this. We probably have

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some of the very best, among the best, relatively speaking,

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Defence Forces in Europe, so improving capabilities - you have

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a lot about this in the book, and we can think about it more later - what

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else is still needed. But many other European countries are in a bit of a

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situation now where they're pushing for conscription, and it's not exactly

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- will we have to bring that in here too, and basically have to start almost

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from zero, it feels like. Well yeah, in many, many things you still have to

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remember that Nato's European pillar - Nato's European

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member states - they have 1.6 million soldiers, mostly professional soldiers, in the ranks,

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some reserves too, there are almost 5,000

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battle tanks, almost 3,000 combat aircraft, and so on,

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and so on, over 60 submarines - so it's substantial military

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capability. What's missing is materiel, I mean

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ammunition, supplies to keep fighting the war for longer. What's missing is

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the defence-industry capacity to keep that war going for a long time, because

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nobody can really stockpile enough materiel for three years

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of warfare - there's no sense in that, it's not cost-effective. But

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you need enough that you can start the war and fight it

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for a few months, and then the defence industry starts pushing out

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more and more materiel so that there's no end in sight, because

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the defence industry keeps it running. So there's a lot of room for improvement on that front,

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and of course also personnel, reserves - you can't fight a war for a long time

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with just that kind of professional army, it almost requires - there should be

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conscription, so that you also get, so to speak, people into the Russian meat grinder

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- the manpower for this brutal war that's basically what all

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European professional armies are manned at, something like 80-90% strength,

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roughly, when they've recruited enough people. Only those that have

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conscription have no problem recruiting professional officers and NCOs

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either, because it's conscription - one of the good things about it is

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that it's an excellent recruitment channel specifically for that professional

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career track, plus at the same time it builds that broad reserve that's then

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needed if things kick off. Well, you'd think they'd be here visiting now to see

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how we can get this up and running, or are we just being naive here,

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thinking that Russia, over there, according to one scenario, is

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almost winning that. Well yeah, this is - Russia has

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excellent information campaigns, they've successfully managed to give

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the impression that they'd somehow got the upper hand. Russia doesn't have the military

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capability to defeat Ukraine - they've been grinding at it for three years, grinding, and they can't

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beat Ukraine. And even if they managed to break through the defence lines in Donetsk,

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they don't have the capability for any deep blitzkrieg-style operations to conquer

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large areas. Their economy is in really serious trouble - for about a year

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they can keep grinding at this kind of volume, and after that it'll start to

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really squeeze them. Of course it's a dictatorship, so they can just throw

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more taxes on people, they can decide to cut all the social

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benefits, and people won't dare take to the streets because they'll be met with machine guns, and

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limping along like this, they can keep going for a few more years, but it's

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not a picnic in any way, in any sense. Russia isn't

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winning anything. And this - this is exactly what sometimes annoys me a bit,

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this scare-mongering that Russia's about to attack Europe any moment. Well, for three

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years they've been trying against the Ukrainians and haven't achieved anything, haven't

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managed to pull off a victory, so what would even be the conditions for them

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to attack Nato's professional armies, or say, Finland's advanced

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conscript-based army - in my opinion, not really convincing. Yeah, but then

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maybe if they get some kind of peace here now, and rearm, and

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build up their forces, then a few years down the line the bow will be

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drawn taut again. But that's something to think about. At the start of the book there was that

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historical section, and this idea of Russia's expansionist

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- or you could say, maybe your ex-colleague's idea of Russia's

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strategic culture, the idea behind it being that it's like a spreading amoeba

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that just can't help itself, that it maliciously wants to expand,

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and you just have to accept that, that's just how it is. And then it feels like

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here in the West too there are a lot of these so-called realists, and they

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call themselves these Mearsheimer types who say that this should even

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be understood. So basically that Russia's expansion needs to be understood

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at the very least as this kind of buffer zone, and Ukraine should have always

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just accepted its fate as a buffer zone. And in a way this

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kind of historical talk about how Nato shouldn't expand eastward - that would have

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actually been justified. There's actually a lot of this kind of talk going around now,

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these days. Maybe it's Putin's talking points, but these are still Americans who talk

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like this. Well, Americans who don't understand Russia, don't understand the Russian way of fighting

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and look at it through a great-power lens. They don't understand Europe any better,

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and think, well, in the big picture, what do

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some small nations matter there - they don't understand that small nations have their own

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own aspirations, their own needs to secure their own safety. You have to remember

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that Nato hasn't forced anyone to join it - all those countries that

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Russia has attacked over the centuries, occupied them,

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subjugated, plundered and raped them - they wanted security, and when they finally

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got the chance, when Russia was so - Russia was so weak

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it couldn't stop them joining Nato, they all took that opportunity

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and used it. And talk about Nato being some kind of military threat

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to Russia, and that this war supposedly needs to be fought because of that - that's just

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nonsense. The idea that a 32-nation defence alliance that can only just

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barely manage to agree on joint defence would attack

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even a single state, with, what, 1,500 combat-ready spearhead troops

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on standby - that's completely absurd, it's never going to happen. And yes, Putin knows this.

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Nato is a threat to him precisely because Nato stops him from subjugating his neighboring countries.

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Along with Nato comes all sorts of nonsense like democracy, anti-corruption

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efforts, rule-of-law principles - which are of course a threat

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to dictatorships. And the closer it gets to his borders, the more uncomfortable

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it gets for those dictators. That's what this is really about. If all these

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former Warsaw Pact border states hadn't been let into Nato, what would

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the situation be - Putin picking off those countries one at a time, and

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Western Europe wringing its hands wondering what on earth should be

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done. Mm, yeah. Well, let's move on to the next section of the book, the

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historical documentation. And this is interesting for us doom

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scrollers. I mean, over three years I've probably watched, I don't know, 5,000

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videos about the situation in Ukraine, and these five videos we've

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made here on the Neuvottelija channel are, in a way,

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interesting documents in themselves. The first one was indeed

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in March, right when it was still fresh, right after the invasion, when

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we talked - and in this book too there's a lot of discussion

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about the attempt to seize Hostomel, or rather, about that

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surprise attack, and then about the fighting around the Kyiv area. Wasn't that

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one whole episode that was really quite significant at the

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start - of course, because Kyiv is, after all, Ukraine's

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center of political and economic power, and if it had been lost to the Russians -

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if the Russians had managed to take it, then Ukraine's

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defence would have gotten really quite challenging. And, well, traditionally,

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as I said, when the Russians conquer a country

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they generally always try to take the capital first, precisely

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for these reasons. Yeah, then thinking about Mariupol, there was a lot

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of a bit of a Stalingrad-siege feel to it, and somehow you hoped

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against all expectations that they'd somehow have managed to stop the land bridge

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forming to Crimea, but it went the other way. Was there any hope at all in

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Mariupol, or did the Russians just somehow throw a huge amount of resources at it -

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not really, it was pretty clear that the Ukrainians

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weren't going to be able to free Mariupol. But the Russians, on the other hand, made a bit of

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the same mistake on a smaller scale that the Germans made at Stalingrad, in that

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they had to tie down forces there in urban combat, which is

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far more grinding than what the Ukrainians had

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defending there. And this delayed, delayed their advance then toward

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Donetsk and the north, which gave the Ukrainians time to get things

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in order. And this time bought, which the defenders of Mariupol

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gained over several weeks, was very important, because when the

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southern coastal area was lost to Russia very quickly, the Ukrainians

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still got time to stop the Russian

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advance there and hold - build some kind of defence lines.

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Yeah, and then the northeast - that was a nice surprise for me. Basically Ukraine

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somehow just broke through in the Kharkiv and Kherson areas, like

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somehow it was amazing, they just advanced like a proper blitzkrieg,

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style, covering hundreds of kilometers there - that was pretty impressive, and

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I don't know if the Russians had somehow just, just fallen asleep

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there. Yeah, yeah, and the Russians have had these lapses happen every now and

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then, where no information comes up from the tactical level saying,

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'by the way, something's being planned here' - it's dismissed as nonsense, 'don't see monsters where there aren't any.' No, no

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point taking those seriously, because there's this confirmation bias that the Ukrainians won't

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- and they fell completely for the Ukrainians' deception in these

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matters, that there were thinly deployed, lightly equipped units there,

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National Guard-type troops, and once it started rolling, there was no longer

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any capability to respond to it, and panic set in. Yeah, and in my opinion this

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whole thing also kind of started a bit with the Black Sea

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situation - Russia isn't really that strong a Black Sea power without

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Crimea, and the naval base is there, so in a way then

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Ukraine, really just with Odesa and quite a small stretch of coastline,

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still managed astonishingly well in the Black - yeah, that's - because this

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warfare has otherwise been fairly traditional, even if drones are flying around everywhere, it's

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still pretty traditional warfare there in the naval battles.

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But there, a really significant technological breakthrough happened, in that

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Ukraine, which lost its navy right at the very start,

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built up capability with unmanned surface vessels,

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long-range strikes with drones and aircraft and cruise missiles, and started waging

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long-range warfare, with which they actually broke Russia's naval blockade and drove Russia's

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navy back there, so that it no longer dared move, say, from Crimea

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westward at all, and after that they even drove them out of Crimea,

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in terms of basing, once they destroyed a Kilo-class submarine in dry dock there,

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and other similar things, struck the navy's headquarters, and

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airbases were knocked out, and so on, and Russia was really forced

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to pull its basing back to the eastern edge of the Black Sea, to build

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a new naval base there, which is also being targeted - so yeah, it

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was quite a feat by the Ukrainians. Yeah, I had one

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conversation there with Jarmo Lindberg, and Wallenheim was also in it, there was

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this Ukrainian aid organization that came, to a parliamentary

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...for a parliamentary visit, and the Ukrainian said that with our Iceye—

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—satellite, one submarine was located and destroyed, so

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Finns have helped in this naval war too. Yeah, right. And that's

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the most important thing — when you're building long-range

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strike capability, you need cruise mis— Ukraine will soon have cruise missiles that

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fly 3,000 — 3,000 kilometers — with an accuracy of a few meters, so

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there's no use in that if you can't provide targeting with a few meters'

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accuracy. So that immediately places demands on your targeting capability, and, and, and

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yeah, you need something like an Iceye-type SAR radar, with which you're able to

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actually target those targets with sufficient accuracy, and you'd need

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maybe even something like time-sensitive targeting, if you have enough

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capabilities available, and you're also able to do BDA, that is, battle damage assessment

253
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and that's important — when you set some depot on fire, then there's

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a big smoke cloud, and through it you can't see with electro-optical equipment

255
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what effect was actually achieved. But with a SAR radar you can

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look and go, ah, that hangar and that one and that one have been destroyed like this, and these haven't been destroyed

257
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yet, except for a single pipe. So, in all these capabilities, we have

258
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significant know-how and capability, which we should — which is worth being proud of,

259
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that Finns have managed to build something like this too. Yeah. And then here,

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kind of, in the moment of success, the joy was spoiled—

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—allegedly Starlink cut the power right when a drone strike had just been carried out

262
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and that just shows you need to have that guidance technology, kind of,

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spread across several layers — you can't rely on just one, one system. Yeah,

264
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yeah, right, right. And here, using commercial technologies

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has shown its strength, but then of course also its vulnerability, then

266
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indeed, if — if the, uh, Western oligarch who happens to own

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that capability, happens to disagree on the matter. Well, now the Poles

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have bought this Starlink capability in advance, and then

269
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if it starts getting cut off, that's a breach of contract. So these are interesting

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things. Yeah, the Poles have really put in — they've put in 5 percent

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of GDP, and they've really taken this seriously — they have no

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illusions about the Russians. Sometimes you get the feeling that

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the Poles aren't preparing to defend Warsaw, but to take Moscow

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but, well, they've really invested massively, and there too, once again,

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all of us, all of Russia's border neighbors, are prisoners of our history, in that

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we have those harsh experiences, and we know and understand the Russians, we

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know what can come from there at its worst, and the Poles have stated that

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they've been partitioned enough times — they've been

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carved up enough times that now they won't give in anymore. Yeah. Then we had one

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legendary episode — it was the same weekend, right after, uh, Prigozhin's—

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—march to conquer Moscow. So, in a way, here was this, uh,

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Putin's mercenary army, and it somehow personified for me that Bakhmut

283
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grinding advance — at one point it was this kind of endless

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discussion: are they going in there or not, and how is this Prigozhin thing going. So

285
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this was, honestly, a completely surreal event, in my opinion,

286
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at that point. Yeah, it just shows how fragile such a—

287
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—dictatorship is, in that most of those people there aren't genuinely

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loyal — they're opportunists seeking high positions for themselves, so that they

289
00:20:19.919 --> 00:20:24.200
can steal more of Russia's national wealth. They're not genuinely

290
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loyal supporters of Putin's — supporters. And if it looks like Putin is losing

291
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his position, then instead of rushing straight to the TV studio to declare

292
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that we'll fight to the last bullet and the last breath

293
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for our president — well, everyone just stood there, caught off guard,

294
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frozen in place, watching to see what would happen, and, well, Prigozhin just went and

295
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chickened out — it would've been worth pushing it all the way through. But yeah, anyway, I

296
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remember there was a lot of discussion at the time about this, like, the boyar layer, that

297
00:20:58.760 --> 00:21:04.640
there's Shoigu and Surovikin and Prigozhin and

298
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in a way Putin still, kind of, even now, in some war situations, plays

299
00:21:07.760 --> 00:21:10.880
them off against one another — it feels, kind of, quite

300
00:21:10.880 --> 00:21:13.880
chaotic — shouldn't there be some kind of command structure there? But

301
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that's a pretty wild thing too, even at the very top level. Yeah, like, like

302
00:21:18.600 --> 00:21:23.000
we said, it all comes down to the dictator pitting

303
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the boyars against each other, so that no

304
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cliques form — nobody rises to become too strong a candidate to challenge his

305
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position. So then sometimes even the chain of command can be

306
00:21:35.360 --> 00:21:39.039
unclear, even though the formal command relationships are clear, but who

307
00:21:39.039 --> 00:21:42.799
actually gives the orders in the end, whose orders get listened to — that can always

308
00:21:42.799 --> 00:21:47.320
vary a bit depending on the situation. Yeah. Then, after that, came maybe, kind of,

309
00:21:47.320 --> 00:21:51.039
a bit of hubris — in that, now that there was a breakthrough in the northeast, and

310
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the Black Sea was, kind of, taken back somewhat, and the Bakhmut thing didn't quite go

311
00:21:55.720 --> 00:21:59.360
through — so then, specifically, Surovikin had built

312
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something that seemed like it might be a kind of Maginot Line, one that

313
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you could actually just walk over. But then Ukraine's counteroffensive fizzled out, and we

314
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had a stretch there too where I speculated whether they'd pull off something with those newly

315
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received battle tanks, kind of

316
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in the style of the Kherson counteroffensive — just straight over the border. But no,

317
00:22:20.559 --> 00:22:24.760
that kind of fizzled too — all that came of it were a few small dents along the border. Yeah,

318
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and there, of course, the starting position was weak, because, because

319
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the Russians had managed to carry out that indiscriminate mining, so that there

320
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were minefields, kind of, hundreds of kilometers deep even, and, well, with that

321
00:22:36.120 --> 00:22:39.640
the attacking force didn't have enough clearing equipment, especially since

322
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the clearing equipment had been spread out all over the place, and the basic — the basic thing

323
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in that kind of attack is concentration of force — you need to

324
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run it like an army-level operation, where the entire strength of several brigades—

325
00:22:52.559 --> 00:22:56.600
all the artillery, all the clearing capability, everything is concentrated on getting that

326
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breach made, after which, once you get through, then into depth and

327
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at speed. And, traditionally, in this kind of

328
00:23:04.520 --> 00:23:07.960
breakthrough phase, casualties are heavy, but after the breakthrough, those casualties and

329
00:23:07.960 --> 00:23:12.120
material losses drop significantly, once you're back there in the enemy's rear, and

330
00:23:12.120 --> 00:23:17.559
hammering their supply units and artillery and so on, and

331
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Ukraine didn't have the expertise — the expertise, the capability, and maybe not even the courage,

332
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because it's always a high-risk move. And what if it fails anyway?

333
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the losses would be quite large, a lot of strength lost. So instead, they did small,

334
00:23:30.720 --> 00:23:36.000
company- — company-level operations, where the strength runs out right at the start. Yeah, and then

335
00:23:36.000 --> 00:23:39.159
it started looking a bit bad — expensive

336
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Western equipment and, in a way, defense resources were being burned through, and then began, in my

337
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opinion, a rather, rather depressing period, in that

338
00:23:46.480 --> 00:23:51.080
the Russians learned they could use old scrap equipment — not so much the tanks

339
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of which they have endless stockpiles somewhere in the Urals, but, well, they noticed

340
00:23:56.400 --> 00:23:59.880
that these glide bombs can be dropped from a distance, really cheaply, and it

341
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looked really bad once they started hammering away with these

342
00:24:02.760 --> 00:24:07.440
glide bombs along the eastern front. Yeah, and that's really it — in warfare, this kind of

343
00:24:07.440 --> 00:24:11.919
technology development always accelerates fast, and, and, and

344
00:24:11.919 --> 00:24:15.799
well, the Russians aren't completely incompetent either — they really do have

345
00:24:15.799 --> 00:24:22.720
stockpiles full of these old, uh, dumb bombs, so this glide-bomb

346
00:24:22.720 --> 00:24:26.559
kit doesn't cost much, and you already get considerably greater accuracy, and

347
00:24:26.559 --> 00:24:30.039
they can be dropped from outside Ukraine's air-defense range, so it's a good weapon, and

348
00:24:30.039 --> 00:24:33.760
that's really what Russia's advance

349
00:24:33.760 --> 00:24:39.320
over the past year was based on — they're able to, because Ukraine has built

350
00:24:39.320 --> 00:24:42.080
its defense quite heavily around built-up areas. There, in the cellars,

351
00:24:42.080 --> 00:24:46.159
they're a bit better protected from Russian artillery, but when you drop

352
00:24:46.159 --> 00:24:50.559
a thousand-kilo glide bomb, then even the cellar goes. And with this they're able to

353
00:24:50.559 --> 00:24:53.480
break through Ukraine's defense from above. But now, there too,

354
00:24:53.480 --> 00:24:57.919
there's been development on the other side as well, in that

355
00:24:57.919 --> 00:25:01.600
now the Russians are complaining on Telegram that

356
00:25:01.600 --> 00:25:05.240
Ukrainian jamming is stopping them — the glide bombs don't work anymore in many

357
00:25:05.240 --> 00:25:08.360
areas — they don't come anywhere near their targets, and they can't be used

358
00:25:08.360 --> 00:25:12.640
anymore. So it's weapon and counter-weapon. Yeah. And then this

359
00:25:12.640 --> 00:25:16.520
drone technology — as such, I got the impression that a

360
00:25:16.520 --> 00:25:21.799
airfield's, like, hangars being destroyed is a fairly easy thing to repair, but

361
00:25:21.799 --> 00:25:25.440
I mean, Ukraine is able to reach really deep with those drone strikes and destroy

362
00:25:25.440 --> 00:25:28.399
airfields, sort of forcing a move — a bit like how the Black Sea fleet

363
00:25:28.399 --> 00:25:33.159
had to relocate over to the far end of the eastern ports. In my

364
00:25:33.159 --> 00:25:37.480
opinion, those tactical bombers too had to sort of

365
00:25:37.480 --> 00:25:45.279
retreat to a suboptimal distance. Yeah, definitely — there have been surprises

366
00:25:45.279 --> 00:25:48.720
for the Russians, and indeed, given that they still have strategic

367
00:25:48.720 --> 00:25:54.640
bombers, Tu-95s, and older-generation ones, so

368
00:25:54.640 --> 00:26:00.080
well, there aren't that many of them — we're talking maybe some dozens of units — and they,

369
00:26:00.080 --> 00:26:04.320
when the bases came under attack, they were moved further away, straight

370
00:26:04.320 --> 00:26:08.840
into shelter, all the way out to Kola and even further too, but the problem is

371
00:26:08.840 --> 00:26:13.360
that it doesn't — doesn't prevent their use, they can still be used, but

372
00:26:13.360 --> 00:26:16.960
on the other hand, since the transit flights are much longer — instead of flying

373
00:26:16.960 --> 00:26:20.559
from, say, 500 km away to go drop — launch —

374
00:26:20.559 --> 00:26:24.799
the cruise missiles and back to base, now they have to fly a couple thousand kilometers more, and that eats into

375
00:26:24.799 --> 00:26:28.720
the airframes — operational availability keeps wearing down the whole time, and, well,

376
00:26:28.720 --> 00:26:35.840
in this way, this way too, it looked like — when, when finally,

377
00:26:35.840 --> 00:26:38.399
at last, toward the end of last year, the Biden administration started

378
00:26:38.399 --> 00:26:41.919
waking up a bit, as time was running out, and permission was given that

379
00:26:41.919 --> 00:26:47.080
the ATACMS, the Army Tactical Missiles, could be used—

380
00:26:47.080 --> 00:26:51.880
into the Russian rear, to a depth of a couple hundred kilometers, which forced the Russians

381
00:26:51.880 --> 00:26:55.480
to move exactly these front-line combat aircraft,

382
00:26:55.480 --> 00:26:59.640
the Su-35s, Su-34s, and other similar ones that drop these glide bombs — to move

383
00:26:59.640 --> 00:27:05.279
them further away again. And yeah, the Ukrainians did notice that the bombs—

384
00:27:05.279 --> 00:27:08.919
the number of bombs dropped, dropped, because the transit flights are longer, so with the same

385
00:27:08.919 --> 00:27:13.399
airframes you can't fly as many, many sorties. Yeah, that does have

386
00:27:13.399 --> 00:27:17.520
an effect too — it's just that the impact comes much more slowly. Yeah, somehow it looks

387
00:27:17.520 --> 00:27:20.159
like this war has been this kind of shift measured in kilometers — that at first

388
00:27:20.159 --> 00:27:24.960
it was within artillery range, a few tens of kilometers, and you could see across to the other side of the border,

389
00:27:24.960 --> 00:27:28.480
and then it's strategic bombers and glide bombs — the Americans, kind of, in my

390
00:27:28.480 --> 00:27:32.320
opinion, have kept stretching this range the whole time throughout this war, yeah.

391
00:27:32.320 --> 00:27:37.039
That's really the thing — as this aid gets given out drop by drop, little by little, which

392
00:27:37.039 --> 00:27:40.919
means Russia has been able to react to it. When HIMARS arrived — okay, so they move—

393
00:27:40.919 --> 00:27:43.600
the logistics get dispersed, the logistics get moved further away, they move

394
00:27:43.600 --> 00:27:47.600
the command posts to safety, and they learned to operate. Well, then along came a bit

395
00:27:47.600 --> 00:27:50.240
of longer-range capability in between, so they move again — so Ukraine hasn't

396
00:27:50.240 --> 00:27:54.120
gotten to the point of, in one go, just unleashing

397
00:27:54.120 --> 00:27:59.919
it deep across the whole depth with a broad weapons mix all at once, which would have been

398
00:27:59.919 --> 00:28:03.360
a systemic collapse for the Russians. That hasn't happened, because they've

399
00:28:03.360 --> 00:28:07.080
been able to keep gradually improving their own operations the whole time. Yeah. Then

400
00:28:07.080 --> 00:28:11.840
here — well, Avdiivka was, in my opinion, a bit similar, a kind of grinding, roughly the same

401
00:28:11.840 --> 00:28:15.080
shift compared to Bakhmut, so maybe we can skip over that, unless there's

402
00:28:15.080 --> 00:28:19.399
something interesting in your view. But then there was the Kursk incursion — for me

403
00:28:19.399 --> 00:28:23.600
it was Emil Kastehelmi — I just had to laugh out loud when he said that

404
00:28:23.600 --> 00:28:27.480
for the first time in ages, German tanks in Kursk. That

405
00:28:27.480 --> 00:28:31.279
really did come completely out of nowhere — this Kursk offensive, at least for me. Yeah, it

406
00:28:31.279 --> 00:28:35.519
just shows that even today, kind of,

407
00:28:35.519 --> 00:28:39.600
intelligence systems are advanced and there are sensors everywhere, and you'd imagine

408
00:28:39.600 --> 00:28:43.600
you have a complete picture of the situation — despite that, you still have the chance

409
00:28:43.600 --> 00:28:48.279
to achieve operational surprise, like Ukraine managed to, by

410
00:28:48.279 --> 00:28:53.399
doing a bit of deception — a bit of deception, and by dispersing — quite

411
00:28:53.399 --> 00:28:58.080
traditional concealment measures — and, well, you manage to surprise the other side

412
00:28:58.080 --> 00:29:03.760
and, well, that in itself was, for Ukraine, quite a good move to try to take

413
00:29:03.760 --> 00:29:07.240
the initiative — not all objectives were achieved, but some objectives were

414
00:29:07.240 --> 00:29:09.880
achieved, that's how it is, but at least now they have one

415
00:29:09.880 --> 00:29:13.120
negotiating chip, and it does look like they're holding on to it, precisely for that

416
00:29:13.120 --> 00:29:17.480
reason — so there'd be some negotiating chip. Probably, probably even the Ukrainians a bit

417
00:29:17.480 --> 00:29:21.519
underestimated just how little Putin cares about how the average

418
00:29:21.519 --> 00:29:25.919
Russian is doing — that if, say, 100,000, or however many, thousand Russian civilians

419
00:29:25.919 --> 00:29:30.640
are forced to flee their homes and can't get back, then — on the contrary,

420
00:29:30.640 --> 00:29:35.919
they'll level those Russian towns flat. It's worth remembering

421
00:29:35.919 --> 00:29:40.880
that when the first — the first Chechen war was fought, then, well,

422
00:29:40.880 --> 00:29:44.080
Grozny, which was a city almost the size of Helsinki, its

423
00:29:44.080 --> 00:29:47.919
core center was completely destroyed. Thousands of people died — they were mainly

424
00:29:47.919 --> 00:29:51.200
Russians, because the Russians lived in the better housing there, in the city

425
00:29:51.200 --> 00:29:55.519
center — they'd been pushed out to the slums on the outskirts. But that made

426
00:29:55.519 --> 00:29:59.559
no difference at all — a Russian life meant nothing whatsoever, so

427
00:29:59.559 --> 00:30:04.559
it's total war from one side's perspective. Ukraine has, surprisingly well,

428
00:30:04.559 --> 00:30:08.480
kept things, in a way, kind of clean — but now it too has started going after

429
00:30:08.480 --> 00:30:12.440
industrial targets, blowing them up — you always get a nice big bang when an oil

430
00:30:12.440 --> 00:30:16.320
refinery goes up, and a few technicians die in the process. So it's not really

431
00:30:16.320 --> 00:30:19.039
quite that clean-cut anymore, in the sense that Ukraine, kind of, down to every

432
00:30:19.039 --> 00:30:25.919
millimeter, carries out its attacks — well, no, they, they focus, they try

433
00:30:25.919 --> 00:30:29.519
— they don't try to kill civilians the way Russia deliberately tries to kill civilians,

434
00:30:29.519 --> 00:30:32.679
to maximize the suffering inflicted on civilians, by striking energy infrastructure

435
00:30:32.679 --> 00:30:35.200
and bombing

436
00:30:35.200 --> 00:30:39.120
railway stations, and carrying out exactly these kinds of double-tap strikes

437
00:30:39.120 --> 00:30:42.640
aimed at killing the rescuers who come to help the people trapped in the rubble

438
00:30:42.640 --> 00:30:46.559
They — they shell with artillery, hit — throw everything at — Ukrainian

439
00:30:46.559 --> 00:30:49.600
settlements that are within artillery range get shelled

440
00:30:49.600 --> 00:30:54.440
constantly, or else, well, individual

441
00:30:54.440 --> 00:30:57.559
civilians who are out on a shopping trip are hunted down with drones, and then they proudly post

442
00:30:57.559 --> 00:31:01.440
videos showing off: 'got myself a kill, a Ukrainian civilian, great job.' So,

443
00:31:01.440 --> 00:31:06.919
well, Ukraine hasn't stooped to this kind of, this kind of appalling behavior.

444
00:31:06.919 --> 00:31:10.679
Instead, they still strike against industrial targets or military targets

445
00:31:10.679 --> 00:31:14.600
— and the industrial targets are, without exception, all ones that

446
00:31:14.600 --> 00:31:18.559
support Russia's war effort, either by earning currency there, or

447
00:31:18.559 --> 00:31:22.399
by producing weapons there. So Ukraine is waging what you could call lawful warfare, while Russia is waging

448
00:31:22.399 --> 00:31:27.360
completely unlawful warfare. Yeah, and that — honestly, I've found it incomprehensible

449
00:31:27.360 --> 00:31:31.440
that this gas pipeline hasn't, like, been broken during the war — the one that ran through Ukraine

450
00:31:31.440 --> 00:31:35.000
over to Hungary. But this, too, this commercial side of things, is then

451
00:31:35.000 --> 00:31:38.919
interesting. And, well, on that note, back to Trump — let's go back to the start

452
00:31:38.919 --> 00:31:43.279
of this — so how is Trump's deal going to play out. The most frightening moment

453
00:31:43.279 --> 00:31:47.320
was when whoever it was — some name I don't quite recall — already started talking about some kind of commercial

454
00:31:47.320 --> 00:31:51.960
cooperation with the Russians — and that already implies that these sanctions

455
00:31:51.960 --> 00:31:55.919
would go away. And that's really — I mean, if you pull the plug out of that,

456
00:31:55.919 --> 00:32:01.120
it's really hard to put back — then Russia recovers pretty quickly. Yeah, and there

457
00:32:01.120 --> 00:32:04.880
— that's where the biggest risks are, because right now they've

458
00:32:04.880 --> 00:32:10.200
already, as part of their cost-cutting measures, practically halted

459
00:32:10.200 --> 00:32:13.480
the monitoring operation — and that's, like, in the US sanctions regime, they have

460
00:32:13.480 --> 00:32:17.240
a global monitoring regime that they use to track sanctions enforcement, and that's

461
00:32:17.240 --> 00:32:21.360
the thing that, in my view, has scared the Chinese — that they don't dare, don't dare

462
00:32:21.360 --> 00:32:26.080
support Russia at quite the same pace, don't necessarily even dare to buy oil

463
00:32:26.080 --> 00:32:30.039
from these shadow tankers, precisely because they're afraid that the axe

464
00:32:30.039 --> 00:32:34.360
will fall on them. Now this monitoring regime has apparently, apparently been wound down, which

465
00:32:34.360 --> 00:32:40.080
is a real problem, because, because the European Union — which now has 16

466
00:32:40.080 --> 00:32:46.840
sanctions packages in place, and a 17th sanctions package is being prepared —

467
00:32:46.840 --> 00:32:51.080
doesn't have as good a global monitoring regime, which, which makes it

468
00:32:51.080 --> 00:32:55.360
easier to circumvent the sanctions. And, well, yeah, these sanctions

469
00:32:55.360 --> 00:32:58.360
absolutely need to stay in force right up until every last

470
00:32:58.360 --> 00:33:02.720
kidnapped Ukrainian child has been returned, the last prisoner of war has been returned,

471
00:33:02.720 --> 00:33:07.760
war criminals have been brought to justice, and, well, war reparations have been agreed. Otherwise, if, if

472
00:33:07.760 --> 00:33:13.360
that's not done, then, then there's not the slightest interest in observing those

473
00:33:13.360 --> 00:33:17.760
agreements that were made. Yeah. I sort of suspect we won't get all the way there — it's too

474
00:33:17.760 --> 00:33:20.840
difficult. So here, probably, there'll be some kind of, sort of

475
00:33:20.840 --> 00:33:25.200
hardship for Finland — well, then you just have to swallow a bitter compromise, but we might

476
00:33:25.200 --> 00:33:28.960
get to keep our independence at least. That's, in my — yeah, here, kind of,

477
00:33:28.960 --> 00:33:34.039
hard to get, like, a total, complete victory. Yeah, no, no, no, no,

478
00:33:34.039 --> 00:33:37.279
not necessarily. But that doesn't mean you should give up, and

479
00:33:37.279 --> 00:33:41.440
just, just — not just because

480
00:33:41.440 --> 00:33:45.559
we should now prevent greedy capitalists from being the very first to

481
00:33:45.559 --> 00:33:49.559
be the first ones again, backed by foolish politicians, to start

482
00:33:49.559 --> 00:33:55.159
buying energy from Russia again, get trade relations back on track, and

483
00:33:55.159 --> 00:33:59.919
get cross-border trade going, without understanding or caring that exactly this

484
00:33:59.919 --> 00:34:02.880
way — like you said — Russia rebuilds its armed forces again and attacks us

485
00:34:02.880 --> 00:34:07.159
the moment it gets another chance. Nokian Tyres' factory already went

486
00:34:07.159 --> 00:34:11.879
for a bargain price. Maybe Fortum's multi-billion-euro energy plant gets sold off too,

487
00:34:11.879 --> 00:34:15.560
in maybe somewhat bad taste, as the main point here — but a lot of people think, well,

488
00:34:15.560 --> 00:34:19.040
even he's quite a cold transactionalist about it. I mean, this is, in my

489
00:34:19.040 --> 00:34:22.679
opinion, a distasteful situation, but if the Trump administration is now

490
00:34:22.679 --> 00:34:27.040
that transactional, then we just have to adapt to that too. But

491
00:34:27.040 --> 00:34:30.839
maybe then, militarily speaking, if you think about it, there will be long analyses

492
00:34:30.839 --> 00:34:35.000
later about the capabilities of the forces and how they were used, and

493
00:34:35.000 --> 00:34:39.839
then conclusions will come about what, for example, Finland can learn from this, and what kind of

494
00:34:39.839 --> 00:34:43.359
readiness and capabilities we should then now

495
00:34:43.359 --> 00:34:48.159
build up. Yeah, it's a moving target we're shooting at right now, because the war

496
00:34:48.159 --> 00:34:52.639
is still ongoing — a lot of things are

497
00:34:52.639 --> 00:34:57.839
based on assumptions. We don't really know what's actually happened, and

498
00:34:57.839 --> 00:35:00.800
then, once the fighting ends at some point and you've spent a couple of years analyzing it,

499
00:35:00.800 --> 00:35:03.800
we'll have a clear picture of what the things are that we need to

500
00:35:03.800 --> 00:35:08.400
learn from it. But some picture of it we can already form, and some assessment we can already

501
00:35:08.400 --> 00:35:12.160
make. On a large scale you can certainly say that Finland's

502
00:35:12.160 --> 00:35:16.079
Defence Forces development — for years we've done exactly the right things. We have

503
00:35:16.079 --> 00:35:20.640
exactly the kind of system that Ukrainians wish they had,

504
00:35:20.640 --> 00:35:26.240
and when you think about how this has succeeded so well, then

505
00:35:26.240 --> 00:35:31.240
you have to remember that our forces were developed specifically against a Russian

506
00:35:31.240 --> 00:35:35.680
attack, and based on intelligence,

507
00:35:35.680 --> 00:35:38.320
we looked at what kind of system the Russians were developing, what kind of war they

508
00:35:38.320 --> 00:35:43.079
fight, and then created a system with which that Russian

509
00:35:43.079 --> 00:35:46.280
attack could be stopped — now that Russia attacks the way we

510
00:35:46.280 --> 00:35:49.119
assumed it would, attacking there in Ukraine a bit worse, but

511
00:35:49.119 --> 00:35:52.760
still along exactly the same principles. And as it turns out, Ukrainians wish

512
00:35:52.760 --> 00:35:55.200
they had exactly the system that we built to stop

513
00:35:55.200 --> 00:35:58.920
a Russian attack. Yeah — thinking about that crossing-the-border thing,

514
00:35:58.920 --> 00:36:02.319
how the mood swings there — on one hand, for Ukraine with Kursk,

515
00:36:02.319 --> 00:36:07.000
it turned out surprisingly easy, they just crossed some kind of soft border, waging war

516
00:36:07.000 --> 00:36:10.640
on Russian territory. Or then down south, in the early stage of the war,

517
00:36:10.640 --> 00:36:14.640
from Crimea especially, the Russians managed to seize territory really fast

518
00:36:14.640 --> 00:36:18.760
— is Finland's eastern border now? Classically it's been built a bit so that from there

519
00:36:18.760 --> 00:36:22.359
you can get across, but then pushback suddenly starts coming. So is there, like,

520
00:36:22.359 --> 00:36:25.839
in a way, any tactical benefit to that, from that border region

521
00:36:25.839 --> 00:36:29.079
or is it better to somehow leave it a bit deserted, or what's

522
00:36:29.079 --> 00:36:33.480
the game there? Well, no — the intention is to keep the whole of Finland

523
00:36:33.480 --> 00:36:37.599
inhabited, and also to support the eastern — the eastern border. That's in the current government's

524
00:36:37.599 --> 00:36:41.760
programs too. And we're trying to get support from the EU so that those empty

525
00:36:41.760 --> 00:36:46.280
wilderness areas don't necessarily go unguarded by any defender — though, yeah, there

526
00:36:46.280 --> 00:36:51.680
does need to be some kind of active presence. But the fact is that

527
00:36:51.680 --> 00:36:56.520
if you look at last century's wars fought against Russia, or

528
00:36:56.520 --> 00:37:00.800
against the Soviet Union — twice they tried, from north of Lake Ladoga,

529
00:37:00.800 --> 00:37:05.680
to attack, using that long eastern border. And both

530
00:37:05.680 --> 00:37:08.200
times — in the Winter War as well as in the Continuation War — those forces

531
00:37:08.200 --> 00:37:14.280
were surrounded and destroyed there. So there were all the

532
00:37:14.280 --> 00:37:17.960
battles — Suomussalmi in the Winter War, and the Ilomantsi

533
00:37:17.960 --> 00:37:23.560
battles in the Continuation War — it's extremely challenging terrain to run

534
00:37:23.560 --> 00:37:26.560
large-unit offensives through. Maybe that's gotten a bit easier over this

535
00:37:26.560 --> 00:37:31.480
century — but yes, our biggest advantage is our terrain,

536
00:37:31.480 --> 00:37:35.640
weather conditions, and location. This is a challenging place for Russia, because here

537
00:37:35.640 --> 00:37:38.720
forces have to be concentrated — their

538
00:37:38.720 --> 00:37:43.599
core support area is quite far away, over fairly difficult and sparse

539
00:37:43.599 --> 00:37:47.040
transport infrastructure, so we'd see well in advance if

540
00:37:47.040 --> 00:37:51.480
apparently that Grumpy Neighbor is trying to start doing something again —

541
00:37:51.480 --> 00:37:55.480
massing troops. And then once the actual operation starts, your rear area

542
00:37:55.480 --> 00:37:59.680
— the logistics and support — depends on very sparse, poor

543
00:37:59.680 --> 00:38:03.920
transport infrastructure that we're able to strike, and now we have a much

544
00:38:03.920 --> 00:38:06.200
better ability to do that now that we're a Nato country. And when you set out

545
00:38:06.200 --> 00:38:10.760
to attack, ahead of you is that pretty challenging, difficult terrain where your

546
00:38:10.760 --> 00:38:14.960
forces can't operate the way Finns know how to operate. That was already true in Soviet

547
00:38:14.960 --> 00:38:19.599
times too — fighting in Finland was a kind of special warfare,

548
00:38:19.599 --> 00:38:23.280
in Finnish forest terrain, which requires special equipment, special units, which

549
00:38:23.280 --> 00:38:27.480
the Russians didn't have, and still don't — so it's not easy to come here.

550
00:38:27.480 --> 00:38:32.040
Yeah, and then we've invested really well in things like HIMARS and

551
00:38:32.040 --> 00:38:37.079
similar long-range missile systems. Then there's the air side —

552
00:38:37.079 --> 00:38:41.079
the F-18 can already do quite well with that kind of air-to-ground,

553
00:38:41.079 --> 00:38:45.240
cruise missiles, essentially, with really long range, to wreck things. And

554
00:38:45.240 --> 00:38:50.200
the F-35 certainly won't be any worse. No — and this is exactly it: when

555
00:38:50.200 --> 00:38:53.920
you build up national capability, you need it at the strategic,

556
00:38:53.920 --> 00:38:58.440
operational and tactical levels — that's where things get done. And the

557
00:38:58.440 --> 00:39:01.640
strategic level, where the political leadership together with the military

558
00:39:01.640 --> 00:39:04.720
leadership decides how these things get done — that's where the political

559
00:39:04.720 --> 00:39:08.880
decisions matter more than anything, and things like whether there's a large

560
00:39:08.880 --> 00:39:13.680
defence budget, whether we have universal conscription or not, and

561
00:39:13.680 --> 00:39:18.680
whether we form alliances or not. And now we've made the right decisions —

562
00:39:18.680 --> 00:39:22.119
the decisions that give us a system producing that large reserve, because however

563
00:39:22.119 --> 00:39:25.480
it goes, in war it's always certain that people die and get wounded, and more

564
00:39:25.480 --> 00:39:28.520
people are needed. We have that large reserve so that we're able to defend this large

565
00:39:28.520 --> 00:39:33.440
territory credibly, and users can be found — equipment can be found for those

566
00:39:33.440 --> 00:39:37.160
users. Then, at the operational level too, there need to be good

567
00:39:37.160 --> 00:39:40.880
plans for how this is done. And that expertise

568
00:39:40.880 --> 00:39:44.359
at the tactical level and the combat-technical level, knowing how to use and exploit

569
00:39:44.359 --> 00:39:48.000
our own conditions here — all of this we've developed over decades, and this

570
00:39:48.000 --> 00:39:52.079
is one thing that has come up a lot during this war, the Ukraine war —

571
00:39:52.079 --> 00:39:56.000
the fact that when Western countries start

572
00:39:56.000 --> 00:40:02.160
training Ukrainian soldiers in Western countries, they get taught Western-style warfare, which

573
00:40:02.160 --> 00:40:05.040
basically means you have complete

574
00:40:05.040 --> 00:40:08.760
air superiority, complete control of the electromagnetic spectrum, a huge logistics

575
00:40:08.760 --> 00:40:12.800
system backing you up, and then you go and beat them up. Well, then

576
00:40:12.800 --> 00:40:16.880
the guys get sent back to Ukraine, where none of that exists. So the

577
00:40:16.880 --> 00:40:20.200
kind of warfare taught there doesn't fit what's actually happening in Ukraine.

578
00:40:20.200 --> 00:40:24.160
The Finnish volunteers who've been training Ukrainians over there have

579
00:40:24.160 --> 00:40:27.480
gotten a lot of really good, positive feedback, because

580
00:40:27.480 --> 00:40:30.040
Finnish tactics have always been the tactics of the outnumbered, because we

581
00:40:30.040 --> 00:40:34.319
started from the premise that we're up against the Soviet Union, which has air superiority and

582
00:40:34.319 --> 00:40:39.400
electronic-warfare jamming capability, superior artillery, and so on —

583
00:40:39.400 --> 00:40:43.800
that kind of tactic works, works against a numerically and technically superior opponent.

584
00:40:43.800 --> 00:40:48.000
You exploit the attacker's weaknesses and your own strengths, and that's

585
00:40:48.000 --> 00:40:54.079
how it plays out. That Russian mechanized attack formation,

586
00:40:54.079 --> 00:40:58.400
they just somehow don't quite know how to advance properly — thankfully — but

587
00:40:58.400 --> 00:41:01.640
that kind of grinding with artillery and glide bombs — that they

588
00:41:01.640 --> 00:41:07.599
do seem to be world-class at now. Yeah, yeah, you have to remember that, thank God,

589
00:41:07.599 --> 00:41:12.480
the Russians have historically been well behind the West in operational skill —

590
00:41:12.480 --> 00:41:15.880
back when, sometime in the '30s, the Germans were only just starting to see

591
00:41:15.880 --> 00:41:19.000
the first signs of that kind of warfare — Blitzkrieg — the Russians had already

592
00:41:19.000 --> 00:41:24.040
been developing deep-battle doctrine for decades, and operational-level

593
00:41:24.040 --> 00:41:29.720
warfare, where every branch of the forces works, works together

594
00:41:29.720 --> 00:41:33.520
But thank God, they never actually had the ability to develop

595
00:41:33.520 --> 00:41:37.920
that kind of million-man mass army that could actually carry out the operations

596
00:41:37.920 --> 00:41:40.560
that their best operational minds had developed and

597
00:41:40.560 --> 00:41:44.440
planned — how that war should be fought. In the late stages of World War Two, they

598
00:41:44.440 --> 00:41:48.960
were finally starting to reach that level, after years of training

599
00:41:48.960 --> 00:41:53.200
and letting capable officers do the job. And they got

600
00:41:53.200 --> 00:41:56.520
support from the West so the forces could actually move, because otherwise the Russians wouldn't have been able

601
00:41:56.520 --> 00:41:59.960
to reach Berlin without Western support — 500,000

602
00:41:59.960 --> 00:42:04.440
vehicles and all sorts of other odds and ends came from there to support this effort, but

603
00:42:04.440 --> 00:42:08.359
after that, during the Soviet era, they still

604
00:42:08.359 --> 00:42:12.920
developed operational skill, and quite far too. But like I said,

605
00:42:12.920 --> 00:42:16.400
they were never able to develop a system capable of carrying out

606
00:42:16.400 --> 00:42:20.240
these fine plans — the training level just isn't enough, and it's still not enough today. But

607
00:42:20.240 --> 00:42:25.000
you have to remember, they're not stupid — they know their own system, they know how

608
00:42:25.000 --> 00:42:27.800
to use that poor tool optimally,

609
00:42:27.800 --> 00:42:32.200
as in, 'we have the world's best tolerance for losses.' Well, they exploit that. They

610
00:42:32.200 --> 00:42:36.359
have a lot of materiel — 60-year-old tanks and old artillery and

611
00:42:36.359 --> 00:42:41.400
similar stuff. And there's a lot of it, so they fight that kind of

612
00:42:41.400 --> 00:42:46.559
war, and the Ukrainians are having a hard time with that. Yeah, then it feels like

613
00:42:46.559 --> 00:42:50.200
in a way, our own domestic logistics, bomb shelters, and things like that,

614
00:42:50.200 --> 00:42:55.400
our security-of-supply is really top-class here. But then

615
00:42:55.400 --> 00:43:00.960
since we're kind of a nasty little island — if specifically

616
00:43:00.960 --> 00:43:04.119
from the east side nothing can be brought in to us, since the enemy comes from there —

617
00:43:04.119 --> 00:43:08.119
then that sea war shows a bit that — aren't those damn expensive

618
00:43:08.119 --> 00:43:12.160
corvettes getting taken down, really expensively, with just a couple of

619
00:43:12.160 --> 00:43:15.640
missiles, sunk. But still you'd need that

620
00:43:15.640 --> 00:43:19.079
sea-transport logistics secured somehow, and I don't know whether those

621
00:43:19.079 --> 00:43:22.520
submarines too can be taken out with those anti-submarine weapons or something else — that's

622
00:43:22.520 --> 00:43:25.640
definitely a tricky one, that logistics and maritime-logistics question, so

623
00:43:25.640 --> 00:43:29.800
what can we do about that. Well, on the other hand, you should remember to look at what's

624
00:43:29.800 --> 00:43:35.119
happening over in the Middle East, where the Houthis are firing cruise missiles and

625
00:43:35.119 --> 00:43:38.200
drones and everything else at passing shipping — there

626
00:43:38.200 --> 00:43:43.920
Western frigates are shooting those cruise missiles down left and right, if they

627
00:43:43.920 --> 00:43:47.760
come within engagement range, they basically always get shot down. So when

628
00:43:47.760 --> 00:43:52.319
you have a bigger vessel with diverse weaponry, diverse

629
00:43:52.319 --> 00:43:55.880
sensor systems, its ability to protect itself or other assets is much

630
00:43:55.880 --> 00:43:59.119
better than with some small missile boat.

631
00:43:59.119 --> 00:44:02.599
So a big size doesn't necessarily mean an easier target — it can actually be a much

632
00:44:02.599 --> 00:44:08.240
harder target. And then again, defending against these surface-vessel USVs

633
00:44:08.240 --> 00:44:12.079
— there are a lot of videos showing that the Russians, since they traditionally aren't very

634
00:44:12.079 --> 00:44:15.400
good at shooting accurately, and since those weapon systems aren't designed

635
00:44:15.400 --> 00:44:20.640
for intercepting these small surface targets, they get through. But it's

636
00:44:20.640 --> 00:44:24.000
not a terribly complicated technical thing to install

637
00:44:24.000 --> 00:44:27.960
— even on an ordinary Pohjanmaa-class corvette or a frigate — those kinds of

638
00:44:27.960 --> 00:44:31.839
surface-defence systems that can shoot down all these kinds of, or

639
00:44:31.839 --> 00:44:38.680
these USVs if they come at you. So once again, weapon versus USV — the USV was

640
00:44:38.680 --> 00:44:41.480
a considerable surprise to the Russians. They weren't able to intercept them. Now they're

641
00:44:41.480 --> 00:44:44.079
busy developing some system so they can intercept them

642
00:44:44.079 --> 00:44:47.880
and protect their own warships too, and it's not any terribly

643
00:44:47.880 --> 00:44:51.319
difficult task. Yeah — and from Israel there's Iron Dome and

644
00:44:51.319 --> 00:44:57.119
interception technology coming, which arrives right on time — that capability too, in this

645
00:44:57.119 --> 00:45:00.480
same vein. Some people say the tank is dead now that drones

646
00:45:00.480 --> 00:45:06.800
get shot at by FPV drones and destroy them. Well, first of all, people forget

647
00:45:06.800 --> 00:45:11.400
that the actual situation isn't that you fly one FPV into the side of a tank and it's finished —

648
00:45:11.400 --> 00:45:15.640
the Ukrainians say you often need up to twenty FPVs to have any effect at all, and it

649
00:45:15.640 --> 00:45:21.319
still might not even be a destructive effect. And then there's the fact that if

650
00:45:21.319 --> 00:45:23.720
you dominate drones on the battlefield, you start

651
00:45:23.720 --> 00:45:28.119
a protection system with electronic countermeasures or even kinetic

652
00:45:28.119 --> 00:45:32.880
countermeasures. And those weigh tens, even hundreds of kilos, they often

653
00:45:32.880 --> 00:45:37.440
need electricity too, so you have the sensor system you use to

654
00:45:37.440 --> 00:45:40.000
detect drones, and then you have the

655
00:45:40.000 --> 00:45:44.680
countermeasure system. Well, try putting that on an infantry soldier's back —

656
00:45:44.680 --> 00:45:49.559
it doesn't really work. A tank is a platform that generates its own electricity, is able to

657
00:45:49.559 --> 00:45:55.040
carry that around, and add more capability if needed. Then a fighting vehicle can be made

658
00:45:55.040 --> 00:45:59.079
into a much harder target. Plus, with a 120mm gun, you can

659
00:45:59.079 --> 00:46:03.839
kill anything in a house, in a yard, at a distance of kilometers. So it's not

660
00:46:03.839 --> 00:46:07.839
— if I had to launch an attack across some open field, I'd

661
00:46:07.839 --> 00:46:12.160
definitely go in a tank rather than run there myself in bulletproof

662
00:46:12.160 --> 00:46:18.040
gear trying to get across it. Yeah. Well then, in a way, this

663
00:46:18.040 --> 00:46:21.839
weapons-logistics question — it's probably worth having our own capabilities there. I was

664
00:46:21.839 --> 00:46:25.520
at a defence seminar, and there, if

665
00:46:25.520 --> 00:46:29.760
I remember correctly, even the TNT production capacity was

666
00:46:29.760 --> 00:46:33.640
basically dependent on just one factory in continental Europe. Now, in Finland,

667
00:46:33.640 --> 00:46:37.760
there's Nammo, and, in a way, Forcit, and we're starting really

668
00:46:37.760 --> 00:46:42.359
raw explosive-charge production, which is probably a really

669
00:46:42.359 --> 00:46:46.680
sensible thing to do — it won't have to come by ship from somewhere far away. Yeah. And this is nothing

670
00:46:46.680 --> 00:46:49.599
new. When World War One started, after a couple of months of fighting, everyone's

671
00:46:49.599 --> 00:46:53.800
stockpiles across the board were empty, and in Britain, in Great Britain too,

672
00:46:53.800 --> 00:46:58.000
they talked about a shell crisis — they set up an artillery-shell

673
00:46:58.000 --> 00:47:02.880
— a Ministry of Munitions, which set up factories and started

674
00:47:02.880 --> 00:47:07.599
producing those shells. And then the war lasted many more

675
00:47:07.599 --> 00:47:11.200
years after that. The most important thing is that you have that industrial capacity, either

676
00:47:11.200 --> 00:47:16.079
in reserve, or you have agreements so that you can quickly get

677
00:47:16.079 --> 00:47:20.440
it up and running — that you have enough ammunition to start off

678
00:47:20.440 --> 00:47:23.920
the first months, but then industry starts producing

679
00:47:23.920 --> 00:47:28.440
it quickly. And we've actually managed — our own artillery

680
00:47:28.440 --> 00:47:32.520
ammunition production has been multiplied here in Finland, precisely because we had

681
00:47:32.520 --> 00:47:37.559
some of that capacity — the ministry had put money into it so we'd have

682
00:47:37.559 --> 00:47:41.040
certain production lines standing ready, waiting for that rainy day. Since a pessimist is never disappointed,

683
00:47:41.040 --> 00:47:45.200
Finns tend to manage. So we were able to ramp that activity up quickly. We had

684
00:47:45.200 --> 00:47:49.400
production agreements with various companies so that we could

685
00:47:49.400 --> 00:47:53.440
start converting civilian production capacity, something like that. We need to

686
00:47:53.440 --> 00:47:57.040
build that in Europe too. Like I said, the thing is that — to make

687
00:47:57.040 --> 00:48:00.359
stockpiles for every European country to last three years of warfare —

688
00:48:00.359 --> 00:48:04.880
there's no sense in that, because everyone assumes that every

689
00:48:04.880 --> 00:48:08.079
attacker, every dictator who launches an attack, assumes it'll be a quick

690
00:48:08.079 --> 00:48:12.920
success, a war wrapped up in a couple of weeks. But the only things

691
00:48:12.920 --> 00:48:17.720
that are certain are that nobody knows how long a war

692
00:48:17.720 --> 00:48:22.280
will last, and second, that you go into a war with whatever

693
00:48:22.280 --> 00:48:25.880
you have in stock. But nobody can really afford to build

694
00:48:25.880 --> 00:48:30.359
stockpiles that would last, say, three years of warfare. That defence capability

695
00:48:30.359 --> 00:48:35.400
and its ability to scale up quickly — that's the key thing. Yeah, but if

696
00:48:35.400 --> 00:48:40.000
we now ended up with a bit of a lousy deal in Ukraine, and then, in a way,

697
00:48:40.000 --> 00:48:44.720
the Russians got to rebuild their economic capability through some kind of

698
00:48:44.720 --> 00:48:48.720
ill-advised lifting of sanctions, and don't really get punished properly, and

699
00:48:48.720 --> 00:48:53.119
then some kind of surge of strength comes — well then, they'd

700
00:48:53.119 --> 00:48:55.920
probably be talking years before they get that

701
00:48:55.920 --> 00:49:01.720
capacity tuned up enough to go again. So I'd

702
00:49:01.720 --> 00:49:06.359
say that if things go badly — if Putin gets the kind of deal where

703
00:49:06.359 --> 00:49:10.599
he can say 'actually, I won something here,' and gets emboldened by that, and

704
00:49:10.599 --> 00:49:15.680
the West looks weak — then I'd assume he'd try

705
00:49:15.680 --> 00:49:21.280
to throw down some kind of challenge for as long as Trump is president. That doesn't

706
00:49:21.280 --> 00:49:23.839
mean he'd have the ability to start a war against the West, but

707
00:49:23.839 --> 00:49:28.280
he could, like I said, test whether Article 5 actually works, and the West's

708
00:49:28.280 --> 00:49:33.000
unity, by picking some small, small Nato country and seeing what

709
00:49:33.000 --> 00:49:39.880
happens in that small case. But all in all,

710
00:49:39.880 --> 00:49:43.640
as for replacing the losses it's suffered, that won't

711
00:49:43.640 --> 00:49:46.760
take many years in terms of numbers, since they still have a certain

712
00:49:46.760 --> 00:49:50.799
amount in storage — old tanks, old guns — that can be refurbished

713
00:49:50.799 --> 00:49:58.440
there, there, there. Instead of a new T-14 Armata, or a T-9, T-90 — the T-90's

714
00:49:58.440 --> 00:50:03.839
latest versions — replacing the old T-72s or even T-62s. But quantitatively,

715
00:50:03.839 --> 00:50:07.240
the losses will basically be replaced — that'll take a couple of years. As for believing the Armata

716
00:50:07.240 --> 00:50:12.559
will actually show up — no, no, I don't believe it. It's a huge bluff, the whole contraption, absolutely ridiculous

717
00:50:12.559 --> 00:50:17.200
that it's held up as some wonder weapon. But no, they won't come. But then,

718
00:50:17.200 --> 00:50:21.400
in terms of quality, replacing it so they get modern equipment — then

719
00:50:21.400 --> 00:50:26.240
that's more like a 5-to-10-year project. Yeah. Still, there is

720
00:50:26.240 --> 00:50:32.480
time to prepare and take this seriously. And Russia is economically

721
00:50:32.480 --> 00:50:37.240
compared to Western Europe, it's a dwarf. We should remember that, well,

722
00:50:37.240 --> 00:50:40.839
the West just needs to wake up to the fact that back in the good old,

723
00:50:40.839 --> 00:50:47.280
during the previous Cold War, NATO countries' defence spending was between 3-5% for everyone, and now

724
00:50:47.280 --> 00:50:51.680
since the Soviet Union collapsed, for 30 years we've been enjoying that peace dividend, and

725
00:50:51.680 --> 00:50:55.880
money's been poured into all kinds of nice things, all kinds of nice things. Now we need to wake up to the fact

726
00:50:55.880 --> 00:51:00.440
that, well, now we have to raise those budgets again up to that 3-5% range,

727
00:51:00.440 --> 00:51:04.319
and we won't have money left for all those nice things anymore, so

728
00:51:04.319 --> 00:51:07.680
there will certainly still be enough money to keep, to keep

729
00:51:07.680 --> 00:51:12.520
the rule of law standing, and to keep the school system standing,

730
00:51:12.520 --> 00:51:14.839
and to keep the healthcare system in some kind of

731
00:51:14.839 --> 00:51:18.359
shape. But then all those other, nice, nice-to-have things,

732
00:51:18.359 --> 00:51:21.799
we simply can't afford anymore. And now politicians just need to tell people that this

733
00:51:21.799 --> 00:51:25.760
is how it is, you know: it'll take a couple of decades to bring Russia under control,

734
00:51:25.760 --> 00:51:29.799
and we need to spend money on things like this, because it's still

735
00:51:29.799 --> 00:51:33.480
more sensible for the national economy than the reconstruction that follows if we don't put

736
00:51:33.480 --> 00:51:37.760
Russia in its place. Yeah, if this really goes well, then in a way Ukraine gets

737
00:51:37.760 --> 00:51:41.200
a decent deal, and then rebuilding starts again, on commercial

738
00:51:41.200 --> 00:51:46.040
terms too, sensibly - the Russians get pushed back to at least Crimea,

739
00:51:46.040 --> 00:51:51.400
and then these, the Donbas and other,

740
00:51:51.400 --> 00:51:55.160
border areas end up somehow neutral. And then, I don't really believe that we'll ever

741
00:51:55.160 --> 00:51:59.280
get all the way to war-guilt reparations, that

742
00:51:59.280 --> 00:52:03.680
goes too far already - but never, never say, never say never,

743
00:52:03.680 --> 00:52:08.040
ever, because it's worth applying a bit of that Afghan principle here, that

744
00:52:08.040 --> 00:52:11.960
revenge is best served cold. Because indeed there

745
00:52:11.960 --> 00:52:15.799
were several Serb generals who thought, after the Bosnian war, that they'd

746
00:52:15.799 --> 00:52:19.280
gotten off scot-free. Twenty-odd years had passed, and suddenly

747
00:52:19.280 --> 00:52:22.160
there was a knock at the door, and it was a British SAS commando saying,

748
00:52:22.160 --> 00:52:26.520
'right then, off to the Hague we go.' And yeah, at some point

749
00:52:26.520 --> 00:52:30.319
the leadership in Russia might well change - situations can change - and in any

750
00:52:30.319 --> 00:52:35.160
case everything has to be investigated, international and national

751
00:52:35.160 --> 00:52:39.760
arrest warrants need to be issued at some point. So when the nutcase heads off

752
00:52:39.760 --> 00:52:44.040
for a bit of a holiday, the Spanish police go, 'hang on a second, this guy is

753
00:52:44.040 --> 00:52:48.680
a war criminal' - and off he goes. Yeah, well, it's possible somehow, it just

754
00:52:48.680 --> 00:52:51.720
feels like Trump is so transactional that he'd pull out

755
00:52:51.720 --> 00:52:57.200
of the WHO - he could well be crazy enough to run the UN into the ground, and then we'd

756
00:52:57.200 --> 00:53:01.480
get rid of the Hague too. So this whole international world order right now

757
00:53:01.480 --> 00:53:05.160
might head toward something pretty harsh, like Europe on its own. But

758
00:53:05.160 --> 00:53:08.720
even in that scenario, we just take European pride and

759
00:53:08.720 --> 00:53:13.200
build those capabilities, and then be worthy of Europe's forebears,

760
00:53:13.200 --> 00:53:18.200
so that something good could come of this too. Yeah, so now we need to remember that, that

761
00:53:18.200 --> 00:53:22.640
Trump is shaking the transatlantic link harder than it's ever been shaken during

762
00:53:22.640 --> 00:53:27.680
NATO's 75-year existence. But we need to remember that within

763
00:53:27.680 --> 00:53:31.400
those 75 years NATO has existed, there's been room for all kinds of American

764
00:53:31.400 --> 00:53:36.599
presidents - some worse, some worse still. This is now just a four-year

765
00:53:36.599 --> 00:53:40.359
bump in the road. The next president, probably, even if they're

766
00:53:40.359 --> 00:53:44.760
a Republican too, will probably be a bit more normal, and especially since

767
00:53:44.760 --> 00:53:48.599
if Trump manages to carry out his measures, the US will be much

768
00:53:48.599 --> 00:53:51.880
weaker, both economically and militarily, than it is today. So, so, surely

769
00:53:51.880 --> 00:53:55.480
a correction will come, and the most important correction is fixing,

770
00:53:55.480 --> 00:53:59.680
fixing these alliance relationships up. And even right now, it's not that Trump's

771
00:53:59.680 --> 00:54:03.480
administration - well, they don't like the political side of NATO policy, but the military

772
00:54:03.480 --> 00:54:07.400
side is fine with them, they do understand the value of allies. But I'd

773
00:54:07.400 --> 00:54:10.440
say that even so, something has

774
00:54:10.440 --> 00:54:14.640
changed irreversibly, so that even if a correction

775
00:54:14.640 --> 00:54:18.599
does come, and a somewhat more normal president follows, still

776
00:54:18.599 --> 00:54:22.680
in Europe it's been seen that the US has turned its gaze away

777
00:54:22.680 --> 00:54:26.440
from Europe, partly - looking more toward the Far East. The US has become

778
00:54:26.440 --> 00:54:30.880
more inward-looking and more self-interested, and that's going to remain

779
00:54:30.880 --> 00:54:35.920
the case going forward too, which means Europe, in this global

780
00:54:35.920 --> 00:54:41.079
competitive world we live in, needs to be stronger, and

781
00:54:41.079 --> 00:54:44.799
stronger economically, stronger militarily, and equipped with a tougher

782
00:54:44.799 --> 00:54:48.359
backbone. Because up to now, over these past

783
00:54:48.359 --> 00:54:52.599
decades, we've done quite a lot the way the Americans wanted - like, 20

784
00:54:52.599 --> 00:54:57.480
years of war in Afghanistan, just so that we'd be good

785
00:54:57.480 --> 00:55:00.680
allies. So going forward we need to, let's say, ask - what's actually

786
00:55:00.680 --> 00:55:05.599
in it for us. Yeah, now since you're there, by the way - this hasn't come up yet, but

787
00:55:05.599 --> 00:55:10.280
you're an MEP there, so - I honestly don't even really remember the time when we weren't

788
00:55:10.280 --> 00:55:15.400
in NATO, and we had to rely on the EU's security guarantees instead. And there

789
00:55:15.400 --> 00:55:18.559
still are, even now, countries like Ireland and others in the same situation

790
00:55:18.559 --> 00:55:22.520
we were once in. But, do you see there in the EU whether

791
00:55:22.520 --> 00:55:26.319
there's an actual defence dimension, or is it in practice just a

792
00:55:26.319 --> 00:55:30.200
NATO-parallel structure? The EU's challenge is that when it was originally created as a great

793
00:55:30.200 --> 00:55:35.520
peace project, the purpose was to keep, keep, keep the steel

794
00:55:35.520 --> 00:55:39.760
and coal union going, and through trade, tie together, tie together

795
00:55:39.760 --> 00:55:42.400
the Germans, the French, the British, so that they'd never go to war

796
00:55:42.400 --> 00:55:45.559
with each other again. And that's succeeded brilliantly - real peace. But because of that,

797
00:55:45.559 --> 00:55:50.440
because it's a peace project, defence doesn't fit well

798
00:55:50.440 --> 00:55:54.760
into its basic structure. But clearly the will has changed - there,

799
00:55:54.760 --> 00:55:58.400
it's clearly being recognised that Europe now needs to be made into a security

800
00:55:58.400 --> 00:56:02.559
- and this really is the current Commission's line - that Europe is being turned into a security

801
00:56:02.559 --> 00:56:06.119
and defence union. Instruments are being created for it, capabilities like that,

802
00:56:06.119 --> 00:56:10.400
so it can build up that defence. And all the strategy reports on

803
00:56:10.400 --> 00:56:13.480
this, the reports, point toward talking about pretty big, big sums of money -

804
00:56:13.480 --> 00:56:17.520
we're talking hundreds of billions - that will be spent on defence and

805
00:56:17.520 --> 00:56:21.079
on developing security within the European Union. But at the same time we need to be

806
00:56:21.079 --> 00:56:24.599
careful about not going and reinventing the wheel

807
00:56:24.599 --> 00:56:30.480
when there's already a NATO tool that has defended Europe for 75 years -

808
00:56:30.480 --> 00:56:34.440
there's no point building it all over again. The European Union's role is to build

809
00:56:34.440 --> 00:56:38.640
tools for NATO by, well, building up a defence industry, which it now

810
00:56:38.640 --> 00:56:42.960
ought to know how to do, since it was originally built as an economic union. Now it's building

811
00:56:42.960 --> 00:56:46.599
defence industry and capability, building military mobility, which is

812
00:56:46.599 --> 00:56:51.160
a couple-hundred-billion project in itself - building proper military mobility

813
00:56:51.160 --> 00:56:54.480
across Europe, building

814
00:56:54.480 --> 00:56:58.680
comprehensive security, and doing research and development

815
00:56:58.680 --> 00:57:02.400
so as to create the kinds of capabilities we'll need 20 years from now, and

816
00:57:02.400 --> 00:57:05.160
building those joint capabilities, building European

817
00:57:05.160 --> 00:57:08.160
strategic airlift, European air-refuelling capability, European

818
00:57:08.160 --> 00:57:12.680
space capabilities - so that tools get built for NATO, so that we're not dependent

819
00:57:12.680 --> 00:57:16.280
on the Americans. In ten years we could tell the Yanks, 'go ahead,

820
00:57:16.280 --> 00:57:19.240
go fight your war out there in the Pacific in peace - we'll manage just fine here

821
00:57:19.240 --> 00:57:23.000
with the Russians.' 'Ah, no problem.' And, by the way, 'let's agree, by the way,

822
00:57:23.000 --> 00:57:26.480
that the next SACEUR won't be an American officer but a European officer.'

823
00:57:26.480 --> 00:57:31.640
So it's more balanced, that whole transactional relationship, so we're not so

824
00:57:31.640 --> 00:57:34.680
dependent on America. Then, in my opinion, it's on a healthier footing, and

825
00:57:34.680 --> 00:57:38.520
we can pursue our own interests better too. And even if the goals then end up

826
00:57:38.520 --> 00:57:43.319
leaning more toward Europe than over there in the States, we'd still manage fine. This

827
00:57:43.319 --> 00:57:47.160
building process is no easy thing at all, because Europe is, after all,

828
00:57:47.160 --> 00:57:52.319
quite the committee - dozens of countries with different interests. But

829
00:57:52.319 --> 00:57:56.200
here it's clearly been noticed, over there in Brussels, that people have woken up

830
00:57:56.200 --> 00:58:00.559
to the fact that something needs to be done about this now, we need to invest in it, we need to

831
00:58:00.559 --> 00:58:04.839
be stronger, more independent, because we can't stay at the mercy of one,

832
00:58:04.839 --> 00:58:08.799
one half-crazy American president in these matters, so

833
00:58:08.799 --> 00:58:14.039
the will is starting to be found. So, in a way, from Trump's election there's always

834
00:58:14.039 --> 00:58:17.480
something good to be found too, and the good part is that it shakes things up, it

835
00:58:17.480 --> 00:58:21.480
forces Europe to grow up, without us always

836
00:58:21.480 --> 00:58:24.559
holding our hands out for American help - instead we could say, well, we can handle it

837
00:58:24.559 --> 00:58:29.200
ourselves too, because we have 45 million people, the world's third-

838
00:58:29.200 --> 00:58:35.039
largest market, and a huge industrial power, innovation-

839
00:58:35.039 --> 00:58:38.920
we have 30% - relative to population, we have 30% more, more

840
00:58:38.920 --> 00:58:42.280
AI researchers than the US and China have. We have a lot of

841
00:58:42.280 --> 00:58:46.599
the prerequisites to do these things quite well, really. Yeah, let's hope that indeed

842
00:58:46.599 --> 00:58:51.160
after this shake-up Europe really does get back on its feet.

843
00:58:51.160 --> 00:58:55.240
One more thing about this book - a good, good book, Pekka Toveri, on the war in Ukraine -

844
00:58:55.240 --> 00:58:58.799
it'll probably sell very, very well, and it really does have this

845
00:58:58.799 --> 00:59:02.640
documentary dimension to it, about the course of the war. And then also this kind of,

846
00:59:02.640 --> 00:59:06.359
at least for people who've done their military service, a lot of interesting

847
00:59:06.359 --> 00:59:11.079
war-technology description, and also this strategy, tactics and practical

848
00:59:11.079 --> 00:59:15.559
military-operations analysis. So it's worth it, in my opinion, in my opinion,

849
00:59:15.559 --> 00:59:19.599
buying or listening to it. Thank you for this

850
00:59:19.599 --> 00:59:23.400
visit, Pekka Toveri, and let's suggest a short Sisäpiiri segment too - would that

851
00:59:23.400 --> 00:59:27.520
work? I mean, I find this fascinating - now that you're there in the EU, there's

852
00:59:27.520 --> 00:59:34.119
this taxonomy thing, and it's almost comical - it wasn't that long ago that in the taxonomy

853
00:59:34.119 --> 00:59:38.640
war technology was frowned upon. And now, apparently, nothing is quite so fine

854
00:59:38.640 --> 00:59:42.119
an industry as dual-use technology. So, basically,

855
00:59:42.119 --> 00:59:46.760
technology that's also suited to defence or the arms industry

856
00:59:46.760 --> 00:59:49.920
and also has some civilian use. So let's - let's talk about this

857
00:59:49.920 --> 00:59:54.640
topic a bit more, briefly, over on the Sisäpiiri side. Would that work?