Alexander Stubb became the new president of Finland. The former prime minister, an expression of the center-right National Coalition party, won the second round of elections with 51.6 percent of the votes, defeating former Foreign Minister Pekka Haavisto, an independent candidate close to the Greens. Voter turnout was over 70. Stubb, who started his political career as a member of the European Parliament in 2004, replaced conservative president Sauli Niinisto, who served for two consecutive terms.
For twelve years, Russia supported the policy of dialogue with its neighbor Russia; The country shares 1,340 kilometers with Russia, the longest European border for a single nation. However, following the invasion of Ukraine launched on February 24, 2022, Helsinki’s foreign policy changed and the Baltic country joined NATO in April last year, and new president Stubb has now been given the task of defining the tasks and orientations regarding the Atlantic Alliance.
Vladimir Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the Kremlin hopes the new Finnish president “will have a more balanced approach to the issue of Russia-Finland relations” compared to the situation recently. “Frankly, we say that this is the choice of the Finnish people, their sovereign right, so we can only respect the choice of the Finns,” the spokesman said, noting that relations had “by no means deteriorated” in recent years. ” “On the initiative of the Finnish authorities” rather than through Moscow’s own fault.
Stubb had been absent from active political life for years; In 2018, he tried to participate in the popular primaries to become Commission president and lost to Manfred Weber (although Ursula von der Leyen was ultimately chosen for the position). Stubb has been director of the European University Institute in Florence for the last 3 years. He had a thoroughly European career as a researcher in political science: initially a member of parliament and later elected a member of the European Parliament in 2004, he was Minister of Foreign Affairs at the age of 40. After serving as prime minister in the 2014-2015 period, he moved to Finance in the central government.
NATO membership, which his country has always supported, enabled him to return to Finnish politics with the encouragement of the National Coalition party, which is now in government with Prime Minister Petteri Orpo. “When the homeland calls, you go – he said when announcing his candidacy – I believe that one of the most important tasks of the next presidency will be to work on a rules-based international system.”
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Source: Today IT
Karen Clayton is a seasoned journalist and author at The Nation Update, with a focus on world news and current events. She has a background in international relations, which gives her a deep understanding of the political, economic and social factors that shape the global landscape. She writes about a wide range of topics, including conflicts, political upheavals, and economic trends, as well as humanitarian crisis and human rights issues.
