“It is in our vested self-interest to promote and spend more on defence,” Finnish president Alexander Stubb tells Euronews.
Europe’s “holiday from history is now over,” Finnish President Alexander Stubb told Euronews on Tuesday.
As Finland hosts the first NATO/Baltic Sea summit to bolster defences against hostile acts on critical infrastructure in the Baltic region, Stubb says Europe needs to do more.
On Christmas Day, Finnish authorities seized an oil tanker suspected to be responsible for damaging undersea communication cables. Finland shares a 1,300km border with Russia.
Over 95% of the world’s data is transported through these cables. Russia and China are regularly accused of sabotaging them as part of hybrid war.
On Tuesday, NATO’s Secretary General Mark Rutte pledged to send drones, frigates and aircraft to the Baltic region as he highlighted a concerted campaign of cyber-attacks, assassination attempts and sabotage.
Finland’s President Alexander Stubb believes his country is well-prepared but that overall, Europe needs to up the ante.
Resources need to be pooled better
“There’s a lot of mal-intent coming from the Russian Federation at this particularly moment, and it’s the new normal that we have to live with,” he said, adding this his country is taking necessary measures including joining NATO and confiscating vessels.
NATO chief Rutte recently said that while Europe is not in a kinetic war with Russia now, this could change within the next four or five years if Europe does not step up its security and defence.
“The secretary general of NATO is concerned about the whole alliance,” says Stubb, “As president of Finland, I’m concerned about the state of our defence.”
According to Stubb, Finland has over 900,000 men and women in its military reserves – 280,000 of whom can be mobilised in war time.
“I sleep my nights quite well,” said the Finnish President, but added that there is still several things Europe must do to guarantee their safety.
In his opinion, this includes hiking up defence expenditure, pool resources better and working closely with the USA.
