Russia War Is 'Close'—Finland Presidential Candidate

Citizens of NATO's newest member state head to the polls today to select their next president, the diverse field unified on the need for an agile and resolute response to the Russian threat looming over northeastern Europe.

Finland's 5.5 million people are now casting their votes in the first round of the presidential contest, with two contenders—former Foreign Minister Pekka Haavisto running as an independent, and former Prime Minister Alexander Stubb of the center-right National Coalition Party—leading the field. If no candidate wins more than 50 percent of Sunday's vote, a second-round run-off will be held on February 11.

Finland's president leads the country on issues of foreign and security policy, represents the country at NATO and acts as the commander-in-chief of the Finnish Defence Forces. The new leader will succeed outgoing President Sauli Niinistö.

In his 12 years in office, Niinistö has overseen Finland's pivot from Western-leaning neutrality—and acting as a vital diplomatic bridge between the Western blocs and Russia—to full-blown NATO membership.

Haavisto—who, as foreign minister, signed Finland's NATO application—told Newsweek ahead of the first-round vote that Moscow's war on Ukraine is "close" for those along NATO's eastern frontier.

"Because of our history, because of our big neighbor, and because of our long border, people are aware of all kinds of security risks, even throughout the very peaceful years," Haavisto said in an exclusive interview.

NATO's newest member has a formidable military of its own, but Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 prompted Finns and neighboring Swedes into a historic security realignment. Helsinki joined the alliance last April. Stockholm is due to follow imminently.

"It's very important that NATO is ready and focused to react if any kind of threat towards Finland or Sweden," Haavisto said. "Popular opinion in Russia will start to turn more and more against the war, step by step. But it will take time, and we have to have patience."

This presidential race is Haavisto's third tilt at the office, with the 65-year-old having lost out as runner-up to Niinistö in the 2012 and 2018 contests. This year, Haavisto, who first entered parliament in 1985, is running a close second to rival Stubb in the latest polls, with the men expected to be the two candidates that progress to next month's run-off.

"So far, the opinion polls have been fine," Haavisto said, noting that questions of national security have dominated from the earliest stages of the race.

"I visited Lapland, Ivalo, and one guy said to me that his house is 50 kilometers (31 miles) from the border and asked if he should sell," the candidate recalled. "I said, 'Wow, don't sell; we are keeping the border where it is!' But this reflects what kinds of concerns people might have."

On NATO's Front Line

Candidates have lined up in favor of taking an active role in NATO, continuing support for Ukraine, and working to deter any future Russian aggression.

The measured national security debate has been conducted with what Stubb described to Newsweek in 2022 as "a Finnish approach," i.e., "cool, calm, and collected, but determined."

With Finland now in NATO, there has been much speculation as to potential future foreign troop—and even nuclear weapon—deployment on its territory. In December, Washington, D.C., and Helsinki signed a Defense Cooperation Agreement (DCA) that will give United States forces access to 15 installations (five in the High North near Russia) and permission to store equipment and weapons on Finnish soil.

For now, Haavisto said, the DCA will be sufficient. "It's very widely supported," he said of the agreement.

"Of course, people are eager to learn what kind of storage it is, how much U.S. activity around that storage," he said. "But our answer has been that this is mainly, really, storing the material, and then the U.S. participation and NATO participation will come in the form of the exercises.

"We are not asking for a permanent NATO presence or anything like that. We think that our military can currently take care of the everyday duties in Finland."

As to nuclear weapons, Haavisto said it would take a significant shift in NATO doctrine for the question to be relevant.

"Somewhere in the future, something like this might happen, but my answer has been that nobody has asked to store nuclear weapons, and we have not asked to store nuclear weapons in Finland," he said.

Finns have long been wary as they peered over the shared 835-mile frontier with Russia. That border is now sealed shut as part of Helsinki's response to Russian-directed migrant flows, a now-common tactic used by Moscow and its ally Belarus to destabilize NATO border nations.

"This is an organized operation of Russia," Haavisto said. "We have to withstand the situation and keep the border closed for as long as needed. It's unfortunate that it's concentrated on us, but we can do very little."

Sweden is the last Nordic nation to join NATO. Its accession now appears imminent, with the Turkish and Hungarian leaders dropping their long-held opposition this week.

"We feel more secure," Haavisto said of the latest developments.

"I could imagine that also the Baltic states feel more secure," he added, noting that control over the so-called "NATO Lake," as some officials have jokingly renamed the Baltic Sea, could prove vital in any future conflict with Russia, particularly if Moscow's troops look to sever the narrow Suwalki Gap that connects the Baltic states to NATO's eastern European states.

Western leaders appear increasingly concerned that President Vladimir Putin—untethered in his war of devastation on Ukraine and backed by Russia's war economy—may turn to NATO itself.

"My analysis is still that the threshold of attacking NATO countries by the Russians remains quite high because of the deterrence, because of the response that NATO could offer," Haavisto said.

Recent events show how quickly things can change. In September 2022, unknown saboteurs destroyed the Nord Stream natural gas pipelines running from Russia to Germany. In October 2023, a Chinese ship ruptured the Balticconnector gas pipeline running between Finland and Estonia.

Meanwhile, suspected Russian GPS interference, regular overflights, and weaponized migrant flows continue. Ukraine's recent drone strikes at the Ust-Luga terminal near St. Petersburg—which sits on the southern side of the Gulf of Finland—were a visible reminder of the ongoing war for coastal Finns.

"The conflict is closer to us," Haavisto said. "And of course, the recent events on the southern side of the Gulf of Finland, the chemical storages and burning of those, it just shows how close the war is also to our region."

Newsweek reached out to the Russian Foreign Ministry via email for comment.

Ukraine's Long War

Finns have been among Ukraine's most ardent supporters through almost two years of full-scale war. Tanks, artillery pieces, and large amounts of munitions are among the Finnish hardware in Kyiv's use. In October 2022, Haavisto told Newsweek the West must be prepared for a long war. Fifteen months later, he said, peace still seems far off.

"Europe was never prepared for such a long war," Haavisto said. "We really have to activate our military material production, and not only for this case of what we see in Ukraine but when thinking about our own defense. We have to take this longer perspective into account."

Europe's withered defense industrial base has been "painfully slow" to meet the challenge, he added, while European Union capitals grapple with some leaders hesitant to throw their full support behind Ukraine.

Neither Kyiv nor Moscow appears ready to talk. However, Haavisto stressed that prisoner swaps and the success of projects like the Black Sea Grain Initiative show it is not "impossible" to reach an agreement to end the fighting.

"Even in this worst-case situation, some contact remains," he said. "And you always can be hopeful that, for example, countries like China or others could use their power towards Russia in this."

Haavisto believes Russia is on the road to ruin. "The Russian economy, in the long run, is weakening: no innovations, no new technologies, no high technologies," he said.

"It very much reflects the time of the Cold War, when Russia was lagging behind in its economic development because of the Iron Curtain and isolation," he continued. "A more isolated Russia will suffer economically. And this will be seen in the everyday lives of Russian citizens. But this is a long way [away]."

Kyiv's failure to take back significant territory in 2023 prompted its commander-in-chief, General Valerii Zaluzhnyi, to declare a "stalemate" along the 600-mile front. Such talk has reanimated talks of negotiations and potential Ukrainian concessions to end the war.

"I would prefer a negotiated solution, but a negotiated solution favorable to Ukraine," Haavisto said. "But this is something I would totally leave to the Ukrainians, what are the conditions and so on."

"We have chosen our side, in the West, and our role is to support Ukraine so that whenever they sit down, whenever there are negotiations, they are in the best possible position. More than that is very difficult to say."

Meanwhile, hopes of Putin being deposed either by popular revolution or palace coup appear overly optimistic. The brief Wagner Group mutiny in June "showcased that maybe everything was not so stable," Haavisto said.

"Certainly, there is opposition," he added. "How rapidly that reaction will come is very difficult to say."

The war on Ukraine may yet prove only part of a broader showdown between Russia and the rivals to its West. Putin and his top officials frame the war as an outright conflict with NATO and Ukraine as merely a puppet outpost of the American-led "collective West."

"What I'm concerned about is this war propaganda for the younger generation and in schools," Haavisto said. "We could face a new generation of Russians that have not had any contacts with the West and have been living in that propaganda environment. That's a big question mark for the future."

Clouds to the West

Europe and North America have their own problems. Westerners will head to the polls this year with right-wing populists across multiple nations on both continents challenging for power. The outcome of such races could significantly weaken collective Western backing for Ukraine's long war.

Haavisto described the coming November U.S. presidential election as a "dark cloud in the sky." If former President Donald Trump wins back the White House, NATO allies are preparing for another four years of transactional American foreign policy.

"Usually people argue that nothing bad happened during the last Trump period, and also that the U.S. would lose the whole superpower role if it denounces the agreements that it has been making," Haavisto said.

Newsweek reached out to the Trump campaign via email for comment.

On security, Haavisto predicted a second-term Trump America "will not withdraw from NATO but will continue to pressure European partners to raise their funding" towards the 2 percent of GDP military spending goal. Haavisto also recalled how the first Trump administration supported the United Kingdom's withdrawal from the EU, a strategic crisis for the bloc.

"My best guess is the U.S. will fulfill its commitments," Haavisto said. "We will see a lot of nasty rhetoric, but what's happening in real life might be more limited."

Trump's repeated suggestions that he would pressure Ukraine to give concessions to Russia in pursuit of peace has unsettled many in Kyiv. "We don't know what the exact planning is, and of course, it raises concerns," Haavisto said of Trump's Ukraine policy.

"We are all involved, and we have been investing a lot on the European side into Ukrainian defense and Ukrainian reconstruction. I would say that surprise is not welcome."

Haavisto likened a potential U.S. abandonment of Ukraine to the rushed withdrawal from Afghanistan.

"In Europe, it was looked at as a catastrophe," the former foreign minister said. "We took our influence away too rapidly. And these kinds of moves, of course, we would never like to see in Ukraine."

On the climate front, Haavisto—who belongs to the Green League party—said: "I don't have high hopes if Trump comes back."

The U.S. presidential election is set to be fierce. Trump's challenge of Biden is seemingly impervious to—and perhaps even fueled by—his legal problems and his refusal to accept the results of the 2020 election.

"This has global implications," Haavisto said. "It reflects to the whole world a kind of disbelief in democratic practices. The U.S., which is a 250-year-old democracy, should have a model to show the rest of the world how to run elections."