President of Finland Niinistö: the West should not provoke Russia when interacting interests. He stated this in an interview with The Financial Times, TASS reports.
According to him, the most important thing when communicating with Moscow is not to provoke or ignore it. The President noted that the Russian leadership always remembers a warm attitude towards itself. So, he cited as an example the story of the mayor of the Finnish city of Turku Juhani Leppä. Niinistö said that in the 1990s, Lepla often contacted the head of Russia, Vladimir Putin, when he worked in the executive authorities of St. Petersburg. Since then, respectful relations have developed between the two politicians, which they still maintain, the Finnish president emphasized.
In addition, he said that Finland, being a neighbor of Russia, is closely watching its activities in the military sphere. “There is an old proverb in Finland that a Cossack takes everything that is bad,” the head of state said, stressing that Helsinki should be ready to take a firm stand in certain cases.
Earlier it was reported, that US President Joe Biden refused to respect anyone's “red lines” on the situation with Ukraine. This statement was made by the head of the American state on the eve of the conversation with Vladimir Putin. Thus, Biden commented on the statements that Moscow considers the deployment of weapons in Ukraine, in particular hypersonic weapons, and the approach of NATO infrastructure to the Russian borders as “red lines”. “I don’t recognize anybody’s red line,” the US President emphasized.