A woman walks in front of the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia, on 29 July 2024. The Supreme Court of the Republic of Karelia on Thursday ruled that Finland committed genocide against the people of the Soviet Union in 1941–1944, a ruling that an expert has interpreted as part of an information warfare campaign designed to depict Finland as an enemy. (Alexander Nemenov – AFP / Lehtikuva)
- Next Article YLE: Most of Finland’s well-being counties to show a wider-than-expected budget deficit
THE SUPREME COURT of the Republic of Karelia in Russia ruled on Thursday that Finland committed genocide in the region during the Second Soviet-Finnish War in 1941–1944.
Jyri Lavikainen, a researcher at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs, said to Helsingin Sanomat on Thursday that Russia is evidently seeking to depict Finland as an enemy for its political purposes, with the ruling a part of information warfare that seeks to demonise its adversaries.
“Finland has long had a fairly good reputation in Russia. Now Russia is trying to wreck that reputation,” he added.
Also Ukraine has been systematically portrayed as an enemy by the Kremlin, reminded Lavikainen. The Kremlin later cited this image as justification for its unprovoked full-scale invasion on 24 February 2022.
“There wasn’t necessarily any plan that 10 years from now we’ll invade and before that we’ll target Ukraine with propaganda for 10 years. But in practice that’s what happened,” he commented. “The one thing you can say is that we can be glad that we’re a Nato member in this situation.”
Information warfare tactics can therefore have concrete political ramifications, according to Lavikainen. The Kremlin, he analysed, is seeking to re-interpret history to push the public sentiment in an anti-western direction by leveraging the national myth that it has fabricated around World War II.
Such tactics are also a tool to steer public attention away from the war crimes Russia has committed in Ukraine.
Finland is demonised similarly to many other adversaries. Russia sent Germany a note last spring demanding that Germany recognise the siege of Leningrad as genocide committed against the people of the Soviet Union. If Finland received a similar demand, Lavikainen said he expects the response to be that the issue was settled in the peace treaty signed in Paris in 1947.
“Finland paid reparations to the Soviet Union specifically to compensate for the damage caused by the occupation of eastern Karelia,” he reminded. “If Soviet Union had regarded Finland’s actions as genocide, it could’ve investigated the matter then.”
“If you think about in the long term, what you want to do with [these tactics] is to prepare the soil for accepting the use of military force,” said Lavikainen.
“First and foremost I see this more as a means of information warfare than something that’d have some kind of major influence on foreign policy,” he added to Helsingin Sanomat.
Aleksi Teivainen – HT
- Next Article YLE: Most of Finland’s well-being counties to show a wider-than-expected budget deficit
Source: www.helsinkitimes.fi
