We are now living a time filled with worries: Niinistö

President Sauli Niinistö in his New Year's Speech on Sunday said that people are now living a time filled with worries and many troubles with a direct impact on daily lives made the burden of worries even harder to bear.

“Many troubles with a direct impact on our daily lives make our burden of worries even harder to bear. Electricity prices have multiplied. Both the cost of living and interest rates are on the rise,” said the President.

He also said that furthermore, the pandemic has not left the people fully in peace yet, according to the statement released by the President Office.

“We are now living a time filled with worries. We had already – decade after decade – become accustomed to things always getting better. Or at least to constantly having more and more of everything. Us Finns, we ended up becoming the happiest nation in the world. Without us even really noticing it ourselves,” said Niinistö.

Speaking on the Russia´s attack on Ukraine, he said that the Russian acts of war in Ukraine have been condemned on the international political stage on many occasions. Deservedly so. Finland has systematically and determinedly done the same.

“If Russia believed that a massive threat would rapidly force Ukraine on its knees, it made a serious error of judgement. One cannot avoid thinking about the similarities the situation has with our Winter War when the Soviet Union assumed that they would march into Helsinki within two weeks. As leaders of a country under authoritarian rule, Stalin and Putin failed to recognise a key factor,” said the President.

He also said that another error of judgement was to believe that the European or Western compassion for the Ukrainian people would pass. Quite the opposite happened.

“Instead of only feeling empathy, we are deeply living through this with the Ukrainians. We have embraced the matter of the Ukrainians as our own. And the support for Ukraine only grows stronger,” he said.

Pointing out the Finland´s NATO membership process, he said that the Finnish foreign and security policy is facing a historical turn.

“What we could only anticipate a year ago became reality in the spring. We applied for accession to NATO after a rapid but thorough process,” Niinistö said.

He said that the Russian demands for a sphere of interest and then the invasion of Ukraine. They surely touched every Finn.

“It generated a spirit and a conviction: we cannot continue along our traditional path any further. The strong popular opinion was reflected both on the co-operation between the President of the Republic and the Government, and on the decisions made by Parliament and the parties,” the President added.

“Now we are in a situation where we still lack the ratification of two countries. It is possible that the delay will extend beyond the parliamentary elections this spring. This possibility was already referred to in the discussions last spring. It is, naturally, in the hands of the Parliament in office whether they want to decide on the proposal on accession to NATO on our part already before the elections,” he said, adding, “In any case, we have reason to believe that our accession will become reality in the course of this year. That will end the era of Finnish military non-alignment.”

He also said that even in the future, Finland will bear the main responsibility for defending its own territory. But that will happen as part of a military alliance.

“Others provide security for us; we provide security for others. Our membership will also strengthen the deterrence of NATO as a whole. At the same time, the threshold of threatening Finland with the use of force will become even higher than before,” said the President.