Having met you just once I can confirm what a top bloke you are. Best wishes to you and your family, I hope you get back to the UK safely and your wife gets her visa sorted. If you fancy a pint after the Fulham game, I'll buy it, as long as you buy the next 4.
Didn't I hear on the news this morning that the Fins are finally coming round to the idea of joining NATO after many years of neutrality. I hope that they are allowed to join, although I can't see such a thing going down too well with Ras-Putin.
Talking to a Finnish friend about this last night. She says a lot of the population are still extremely wary, and think they'd quite possibly less safe if they joined NATO, as it would be seen by Russia as a provocation. Our discussion was much more complex and deeper than this, but it would definitely be quite a polarising issue. I'd be interested hear @Tomi 's thoughts on this.
It's a tricky situation. There's a mad dictator with a huge army and an efficient propaganda machine living next to us and threatening us, so a lot of people are indeed worried. Russia has always been the master of lies and deception, Putin is just another war criminal like many of his predecessors. They attacked Finland in WW2 but tried to blame it on us by claiming that the Finns started it all by bombing some little village near the border (which is of course a totally ridiculous claim), and even today the Russian children are taught that fabricated "truth" in school, as far as I know. In recent years there have been many reports of Russians finding "evidence" of WW2 era Finnish concentration camps and mass graves in Sandarmokh, Karelia (an area that used to belong to Finland before WW2). The mass graves really do exist, but the poor souls that ended up in those were murdered by Stalin, not by Finns. There are thousands and thousands of dead bodies in there, including many Finns, which makes it all even more insulting. All impartial historians acknowledge that, but once again the Russians are trying to re-write their ugly history. Not too long ago Putin said that it was a great mistake to let Finland gain independence a little more than a hundred years ago, and even though he didn't go into any more detail, it seems obvious that he's dreaming of some great Russian empire again, and Finland is without a doubt a part of that. My stance towards NATO has been pretty much neutral for all my life, but I'm starting to lean towards joining it now. The problem is, however, that you can't join NATO just like that. It may take years for the whole application process to go through, and that "waiting time" would be the most dangerous time for us. So yes, it is indeed true that it might escalate the situation and things could get even more ugly, but what can you do when you live next door to a barbarian state that can't be trusted at all?
Seems intent on destroying the world. I've even stopped worrying about pollution and climate change....
I had been thinking of you, knowing you lived in Russia. It really seems like Putin has got no care for his own people. He is now totally unhinged. I hope some sense can be talked into him, but I doubt it from what I've seen that is going to happen anytime soon. Sounds like he is going to make Ukraine & Russia 3rd world countries.
Best wishes to you and family. I know you'd rather be at home right now, whether that's in England or Russia, but if I had to pick a European nation to spend some time in Finland would be right up there. Beautiful country with kind people. This may just be Putin's undoing. I hope it is.