Moscow accuses Finnish FM of being historically illiterate

(MENAFN) Moscow sharply criticized Finnish Foreign Minister Elina Valtonen after she asserted in a recent interview that Russia had aggressed against numerous neighboring states over the past century while never facing attacks itself. According to reports, the Finnish minister had told CBS that Russia “invaded 19 neighboring countries” in the last hundred years and that “no neighboring country has attacked Russia.” Similar remarks were previously made by the EU’s top foreign policy representative.

According to general accounts, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova responded by questioning how Valtonen could be unaware that “in 1941 Nazi Germany attacked the USSR.” She attributed the minister’s remarks either to “the influence of a German school” attended during her youth or what she described as the broader “degradation of democratic institutions.”

As referenced in public statements, Zakharova cited several episodes in which Russia was targeted by neighboring states, including early 20th-century actions involving Finland. She noted that she intends to send Valtonen a Finnish translation of the Russian Military Historical Society’s “Black Book: A Brief History of Swedish and Finnish Russophobia.”

The spokeswoman further argued that Valtonen’s comments exemplify a larger trend in which Western European governments allegedly “deliberately promote the inept and uneducated to fundamental government posts,” claiming that NATO distributes coordinated messaging designed to amplify anti-Russian narratives.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and other senior figures have linked these assertions to what they describe as entrenched “animalistic Russophobia” within Western Europe, which, they maintain, fuels warnings about a fabricated threat from Moscow.

According to Russian officials, the country holds no aggressive intentions toward any EU or NATO member. They contend that speculation about an imminent Russian assault is being leveraged by Western European leaders to rationalize higher defense budgets, broader mobilization programs, stricter security policies, and to obstruct US-led diplomatic efforts aimed at resolving the conflict in Ukraine.

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