Russian foreign policy
Ex-Kremlin boss Medledew accuses Finland preparation
Russia’s ex-President Medvedev was once considered a liberal in Moscow. In the meantime, as a hardliner for the Kremlin, he is testing how far it can go in dealing with the West.
Former Russian President Dmitri Medvedev accused the neighboring Finland a war course against Russia and claimed reparation claims from the Second World War. “After joining NATO, Helsinki drives a confrontation course in preparation for a war with Russia under the pretext of defense measures and apparently prepares a bridgehead for an attack for us,” wrote, as Vice-Presentation of the National Security Council, still influential Medvedev in a column for the state news agency.
Medvedev complained that in the “immediate vicinity of the Russian border” staff structures for army units in Lapland would be created. It was clear who these structures were directed against, since NATO had declared Russia as an enemy, he wrote. The column itself bears the heading: “Finland’s new doctrine: stupidity, lie, ungrateful”.
NATO accession causes anger in Moscow
In Moscow, the Finn Security is perceived as ungrateful after the Russian attack on Ukraine. Finland, which was neutral for decades after the Second World War, joined NATO in response to the beginning of the war.
Medvedev now sees an occasion to renew old reparation claims. The new Finnish politics are on old agreements with feet. Moscow is therefore no longer bound to the 1947 peace treaty, which limited the Soviet reparation claims to $ 300 million. The damage that was actually caused by Finland in the Second World War was 20 trillion rubles (the equivalent of around 220 billion euros), the 59-year-old claimed.
Finland participated in the war against the Soviet Union in 1941. The Finns saw this a continuation of the winter war broken by the Soviet Union in 1939, in which Moscow had previously incorporated great areas of Finnish. The winter war 1939 after the Hitler-Stalin pact is still rarely discussed in Russian historiography as the annexation of the Baltic states, which was carried out by Moscow at the time. Medvedev wrote in context that Finland, like Germany, was responsible for the Second World War.
dpa
Source: Stern
I have been working in the news industry for over 6 years, first as a reporter and now as an editor. I have covered politics extensively, and my work has appeared in major newspapers and online news outlets around the world. In addition to my writing, I also contribute regularly to 24 Hours World.
