welcome to hardtalk, from helsinki. i'm stephen sackur. from this vantage point, looking out at the gulf of finland, and with the russian border just two hours�* drive away, it's easy to understand the strategic significance of finland joining nato. much to moscow's dismay, the baltic sea is now very much nato�*s back yard, and that long russia—finland border is a zone of rising tension. my guest today is the president of finland, alexander stubb. hasjoining nato really boosted finland's security? president alexander stubb,

welcome to hardtalk. thank you. let me begin with something you said just last month. europe, you said, hasjust a few years to change its thinking from the la—la land of post—cold war complacency. what is this la—la land you're talking about? well, it's probably... i think, in international relations, there is always a time when a big change happens. 1918, 1945, 1989. and 1989 was, for me and many of my kin, the end of history — the thought that all 200 nation states in the world would revert to the best form of governance, which is democracy, market economy and globalisation. but that ended in my mind in february 2022 when putin attacked ukraine. all the international institutions' rules are being challenged. so the la—la land that we used to live in doesn't exist any more, and we have to readjust.

i mean, in the most literal sense, you seem to be saying that europe needs to learn from some of the things that finland does in terms of preparation and readiness for the worst—case scenario. yeah. for example, this country, although it's fewer than six million people, has an extraordinary number of military reservists, up to 900,000 men and women, who are ready to serve. all young men go through conscription. they have to. yeah. indeed, i think your son is doing it right now. he is, he is. i think most finns have access to a bunker protection, should there be war. yep. is your message that the rest of europe has to do this too? no, not everyone needs to do it, because they don't have 1,340km of border with russia. wejust doubled that border inside nato. what we have done is we've understood what russia is all about. it's an aggressive imperialist state. we've had 30 wars or skirmishes with russia since the 1300s.

because we are front—line states, we need to be prepared. that is why we have general conscription. that is why we have 280,000 that we can mobilise at wartime. that's why we have 62 f—18s. that's why we just bought 64 f—35s. and that's why we have long—range missiles in the air, land and sea. we don't have them because we're worried about sweden. no, itjust strikes me that... are you really the same alexander stubb that i spoke to ten years ago when you were prime minister and you were trying to persuade me that finland and europe should learn to work in partnership with russia. you said, "nord stream is a great idea. "we need access to cheap russian energy." you said, "we in finland are going to build "nuclear power with russian cooperation. "it's good for finland." you said, you know, "we need to learn to trust "these russians." you got it absolutely wrong yourself. 0n those two cases, absolutely, yes. i think, in politics, it's very important to understand that you make mistakes,

and learn from it. i ask myself, not every day, but quite often, "why?" the basic idea was very european, that by integrating together, you actually push forward cooperation. now, did i support nord stream? yes, i was in government. did i want more nuclear power? yes, idid. those didn't happen. and if i may say so, you ignored clear signs. i mean, actually, as foreign minister of finland, you were heavily involved in europe's response to russia using its forces in georgia... yes. ..in 2008. you decided that a pragmatic deal whereby georgia de facto lost swathes of territory was the right thing to do, with no punishment for russia. then you watched the 2014 annexation of crimea, russian military in the donbas. again, you decided that it was right to continue to seek cooperation with russia. you personally ignored all the signals of putin's expansionist ambition. i think there might be some finns that would challenge that

hypothesis, because after i had mediated peace in georgia, i came back and said that the world has changed and we need to change the way in which we approach with russia. i was very bullish on sanctions. i wanted finland tojoin nato, but... forgive me, but in 2018, you described sergei lavrov, foreign minister of russia, and one of the great defenders of putin, you described him as "an old friend". yes, this was 2018, not 2008. yes. i think he's one of the most astute diplomats. he's been a un ambassador for ten years now, foreign minister of russia for 20 years. the arch—defender of what the russians did in ukraine in 2014. he's still your friend in 2018. and now here you sit with me saying, "you know what? "europe has to stop living in la—la land." you've been in la—la land. yes, i think...i think i have in many ways. and i think we have to admit that we all were. and now it's a question of how we change tack. so what you have to do is you have to learn

from the past. i must admit that, perhaps in finnish terms, i've been one of the most hawkish when it comes to russia. i've been one of the strongest nato advocates. but at the same time, there were moments when i personally and many others were actually dovish with russia, and that was the wrong tack to take. it is indeed fair to say that for years you argued that finland would be better off in nato, and now here we are. finland is inside nato. but how far do you want finland now to be a leader in nato? you know, you talk about this 1,300km of front line. finland is fortifying that border. i see that you have talked about the very real possibility of having nuclear weapons pass through finnish territory, which right now is not something that finland has ever countenanced. are you saying finland should countenance that? no. i'm saying that nato has three pillars of deterrence. one is its military,

second one is its missiles, and the third one is the nuclear umbrella, which is provided by the united states and to a certain extent by the united kingdom. and i think it's a very important part of our defence. now, bringing nuclearweapons to finland, no—one has asked forthem, no—one is giving them to us. but there are many different ways in which you can be involved in nuclear deterrence. what kind of a member will we be, you asked. i say we are in the geographic margins of europe, therefore we need to be in the institutional core. 0ur nato membership has no limits. we will play our part, that is for sure. you say the key moment that changed your mind and many finns' mind about nato, well, not so much yours... no. ..but most finns' minds was the february 2022 invasion of ukraine by vladimir putin, the all—out invasion. to what extent do you feel

that, even today, the west's response, its assistance to ukraine has fallen far short of what was required? i'm actually quite surprised at how firm, how effective and how quick the support has been. i've been dealing with eu affairs for the better part of 30 years. i've never seen the european union more united and actually faster. whether this support will last forever, i don't know, i'm just back from ukraine. my message is clear. we need to support ukraine for as long as it takes. you have to remember that things such as the peace facility has been turned into an instrument of financing the war for ukraine. the material help from a country like finland — 23 packages, three billion euros, a huge amount if you compare it to gdp per capita. so i'm quite convinced and hopeful that we'll continue. i'm frankly surprised you say that. what we see in terms of the momentum on the front line in the east of ukraine, a new front line — it seems the russians

are opening up in the north, very close to the city of kharkiv — what we see is that momentum right now appears to sit with the russians. zelensky and the ukrainians are desperate for more long—range missiles, more air defences, more of the weaponry that, they say, they could effectively neutralise the russian threat, if only they had been given them in a timely fashion. i agree. that's why finland has been very front heavy on this. we just came out with a package when i visited zelensky, early april, with a security agreement, and actually with air defences and heavy ammunition, and everyone needs to do this. we need to continue to do this. the us... you must listen to the americans, for example, when they say to the ukrainians, "you must not hit russia's oil infrastructure." it is an escalatory act which is not in your, and, indeed, the wider

world's, interest. do you think that is a fundamental mistake, that kind of message? my main worry right now is not the price of oil. my main worry is that ukraine must win this war. and in that sense, i think ukraine has fairly free hands at what it can do. remember, it is facing a huge aggressor which is violating all rules of war and all international law, and it must win, no matter what. you've changed your tune a little bit, because in 2023 at davos, you said — and you said this with great passion — "i wish western leaders would say �*whatever it "takes' when it comes to assisting ukraine. "they should provide all equipment possible." well, it's more than a year later, and they're still not doing it, and yet you're trying to tell me, "oh, yes, i'm very satisfied." a balance has to be found. i have to also say that there's a slight difference

of what a professor at the european university institute in florence versus the president of finland can say. ah, so you mean you're giving me a message which is now much more politic, much more diplomatic and tactful. to a certain extent. you're not really telling me the truth any more. no, i'm telling you the truth. but there is a difference, of course, in office, in what you can say and what you cannot say. but the bottom line is that we need to continue the help. i think a lot of the help is going through, but of course more can be done and should be done. one more interesting thought that actually comes to me because i'm in finland, which has a long and pretty dark history with russia in the 20th century — you fought a bitter war with russia. finland fought very bravely. but at the end of that war, you, in pursuit of peace, ceded territory, quite significant territory. yeah. about 10% of your landmass was ceded to russia. your message in this ukrainian conflict seems to be that ukraine should not contemplate ceding any territory. you are one of the maximalists in europe who says that every inch, including crimea, has to be returned to ukraine. isn't there a lesson from finland that sometimes you have to make difficult

compromises for peace? the lesson is that we cannot give advice to the ukrainians what they should do. and i should tell you that the 10% you're talking about is karelia, including vyborg and kakisalmi, where my grandparents were born and where my father was born. the feeling that we have for that area is still very strong, and that's why i think it would be over the top of me to tell zelensky what he needs to do. i do think, however, that there are four roads to peace that he needs to guarantee. one is the question of territory. second one is security guarantees. the third one isjustice — in other words, war criminals. and the fourth one is the reconstructor of ukraine. we are not there yet, but we should not be giving any advice to zelensky what he should or should not do

with this territory. butjust one last thought. i mean, finland prospered after world war ii as a neutral nation, a non—aligned nation. very specifically, the finnish people did not for a long time want to join nato. the ukrainians, for very understandable reasons, many of them absolutely want to join nato as soon as possible. but could it be that the only practical, pragmatic outcome, at least in the foreseeable future, will be ukraine not in nato? short answer is no. the longer answer is absolutely no. i think what needs to happen is that ukraine needs to, number one, join the european union, number two, join nato. there is no finnish pathway here. you have to remember that, for countries like us and ukraine, foreign security policy is existential. when you're living next to an aggressive neighbour whose whole raison d'etre is basically acquiring territory, you need to get all the security that you can get. ukraine's place is in nato.

you now are one head of state amongst many in europe. a fellow head of state, president macron of france, has said that europe has to learn a fundamental lesson. it needs to develop strategic autonomy, to invest in its own defence and security capability, to the point where it is no longer dependent on the united states. do you agree with him? i think we're quite far away from that. i think strategic autonomy is not necessarily a bad thing, but it's not realistic. remember, for instance, that finnish defence is based very much on american material. we just bought 64 fa... ..f—35 fighterjets. we have jassms, we have gabriels, and we have gmlrss, which are all of american background. what europe needs to understand is that we need to be a little bit more self—reliant. we need to hike up our defence industry. we need to stand a little bit

stronger on our own foot, but to detach ourselves from america? i do not think so. what do you make of countries like germany, italy, spain falling very far short of that 2% of gdp to be spent on defence, which is the nato threshold and which they signally fail to meet and, it seems, respect. i think we're seeing a zeitenwende, or a turn of tide, and actually germany is going to get it up to about 2% as well. and as we go towards the washington nato summit injuly, the latest is that 21 out of 32 nato countries will meet 2%. more important than the 2%, which is based on article 3 in nato, is what kind of material you actually have. and i think that's, again, coming back to where we started from. it's the sort of waking up from la—la land and taking defence a little bit more seriously, which i think is a good and welcome thing. is part of your thinking on taking defence seriously that there's going to be

a new frontier of competition involving superpower rivalries, and that is in the far north, in the arctic, which finland, of course, is deeply invested in, and which we see russia and china, in particular, showing a very great deal of strategic interest right now. yeah. one of the few international institutions which i still give a little bit of hope to is actually the arctic council. are you serious? i just spoke to the defence minister of canada, who acknowledged to me that right now the arctic council — i mean, it's paraphrasing — but pretty much dead in the water. exactly. but that's why i think we should try to keep it alive and resuscitate it, because that is one of the few places where the americans, the canadians and the russians, including us, here in the arctic, are still involved. whether it's realistic in the long run, i don't know. but it's an inoffensive place. and the arctic, of course, it's about so many things.

it's about the environment, it's about the economy and it's about security. is it a new frontier? i don't think so. but i do think it's part and parcel of a larger geopolitical game. you have a role as president in your country, notjust when it comes to foreign policy and security policy, you're sort of supposed to be some sort of values leaderfor finland. i just wonder how you fulfil that role when it comes to some deeply controversial things that the finnish government is currently doing. having closed the border effectively with russia as a result of the fallout from february 2022 and the invasion of ukraine, we now see that finland is being accused by the united nations, by a host of different ngos, of fundamentally violating international law by saying to incomers who are attempting to cross into finland along that border, "if you try to get in, we'll just chuck you straight out. "we won't give you any right to file an asylum claim. "we won't recognise your international rights. "we're simply going to throw you out." yeah, well, two points on that.

first, we haven't closed the border because of the war. we have closed the border because russia is instrumentalising cynically, human beings, in other words, asylum seekers... but they're still human beings with rights. ..bringing them from two places. one is outside of saint petersburg, second is flying them in from syria, from iraq, from yemen. and whatever their tragic story, they have rights. they have rights, absolutely. and finland isn't recognising them. yes, we are. what we're doing right now is basically an emergency law, which is being discussed also, by the way, in the european court of human rights. it's been opened up for something which is called a intake, which basically means that you have to look at the asylum seekers also from another perspective. if someone is using them as a weapon, then you have to find ways in which they are secured, they're guaranteed, and russia stops it. and, of course, now russia has stopped its action. it hasn't been pushing over any asylum seekers for a few months.

but to be clear, if they start to do the things you've claimed they are doing again, you will simply push these people back over the border, will you? we have four conditions. and then there's prerogative of the border guards to deal with the issue. that law is right now with the government and in parliament, and we'll see what comes out of it. again, in terms of values, which you say are so important to your position, how do you justify finland's long—running treatment of your own indigenous sami minority people? the united nations, again, human rights groups of different descriptions, all talk about discrimination and racism practised against the sami people, notjust for years, but for decades and decades. very political issue in finland. and there are some laws which are right now being dealt with by the government

and in the parliament. and i am actually personally flying up to northern finland, to lapland, to understand better what the actual issues are. understand better what the issues are? i mean, these issues have been around, as i say, for decades. yes, but a lot of them... the sami people have been telling you what the issues are for decades. you were prime minister ten years ago. you know full well what the issues are. and we have been trying to push those laws through, but they're actually quite complicated. let me ask you about the environment in this country in which you have to work. you are the head of state, but you work with a prime minister and a government who are elected by the people. right now, it is a right—wing government which has a key coalition member, the finns party, which in many corners of europe would be described as extreme or ultra right wing. there are members of the coalition government who the finnish media, having dug through years of different social media output, have found evidence of racist, sometimes seemingly violent commentary in social

media from these members of government. as president, do you want to see those people removed from government? it's actually not my business. in other words... but you're the values leader. yes, but i don't have the instruments to actually move or remove or take in people in the government. there's a very clear constitution... so being a values leader is a sort of meaningless title. no, ithink... no, not at all. i mean, being a value leader, first of all, you don't declare it. you do it by action. so i'll give you an example. i've been in office for two months. last summer, there was a serious discussion about the issues that you just mentioned. the value leader at the time, the president of finland, sauli niinisto, intervened and said enough is enough. racism is a very serious problem, i would argue, in many countries in the western world and in liberal democracies, and every country has to go through these types of difficult issues. finland is part of it this summer, but hopefully we will be able to settle things. were these types of issues

to emerge again, of course, i will intervene. the leader of the socialists and democrats, a spanish politician in the european parliament, addressed directly your prime minister. "your alliance with the far right is a real threat "to democracy and to the european project." "mr 0rpo," that is your prime minister, "please put an end to your alliance "with those who want to destroy europe." can you at least tell me whether you agreed with those sentiments? no, no, idon�*t. two observations on that. as a former member of the european parliament, when a prime minister from another party is in the chambers, there's usually a hard attack. that was an example there. the second one is, i think, in today's world, we simplify things too much. the finns party is right now in government. it has been democratically elected. it is working based on a mandate from the peoples within the framework of the european constitution.

in my experience, and i was in government with the finns in 2015, when you're given power, responsibility is taken. then, whether you like the way in which it's done or not, is a completely different thing. for me, this is not about ideology. it is about respecting the rule of law and democracy, and the finnish government is doing so. right, but ultimately it's about whether finland is a country of basic, shared and unifying values. and i would suggest to you that right now, today, if one looks at finland, it looks like it's going through the same process of toxic polarisation that we see in many other democracies, perhaps most visibly in the united states. i think that's a simplification, to be very frank with you. if you look at all kinds of measurements, whether it's freedom of press, whether it's rule of law, whether it's different types of freedoms, finland is always top three in the world.

so i would not come and point the finger at a country which is one of the most vibrant democracies in the world. president alexander stubb, thank you very much forjoining me on hardtalk. my pleasure. thank you. hello there. thursday brought us a real mixture of weather across the uk. it was scotland and, to a degree, the far north of england that had the best of the day's weather, with plenty of sunshine. and very warm in the highlands, temperatures reached 25 celsius in altnaharra — that was the warmest place in the whole of the uk, confirmation of the rather beautiful weather we had here. wasn't like that everywhere, though. for northern ireland, england and wales, we had rain or some thundery showers around, and across berkshire and also pembrokeshire,

we had photographs sent to us of some funnel clouds there — tornadoes that don't quite make it all the way down to the ground. it was very wet for some. in nantwich in cheshire, we had 25 millimetres of rain. now on into friday's forecast, the tail end of the weather front will continue to feed in quite a lot of cloud across northern england, and we start off certainly with some mist and fog patches around some of our north sea coast. aside from northern england, though, i suspect overall, we're looking at a brighter day on friday with more in the way of sunshine. there will, though, be one or two showers popping up into the afternoon, one or two thunderstorms, but big gaps between those showers — that means probably for most of you, we're looking at a dry day with temperatures widely high teens to the low 20s. it will feel warm in the sunshine, highest temperatures, probably west scotland, where i think we'll probably get to 2a — outside chance of a 25. 0n into the weekend, we've got a low pressure system threatening some heavier bursts of rain across southeast england, certainly more cloud around here as we head into the morning. 0therwise, again, we're looking

at a few mist and fog patches — clearing and lifting away, sunny spells, breaking through, and then, into the afternoon, one or two showers and thunderstorms popping up. temperatures still on the warm side — we're looking at highs well into the teens, 23—24 celsius in the very warmest areas. given the light winds and the may sunshine, that will feel very pleasant. for sunday, though, there is a slight change in the weather picture across scotland and northern ireland, in that there'll be a bit more in the way of cloud pushing in here — it could be thick enough to give us an odd patch of rain. england and wales mainly dry with some sunshine, but you will notice the temperatures just dropping a little bit across scotland and northern ireland, given that cloudier weather. now beyond that, into next week, looks like the start of the week should be ok — many of us will have drier weather with sunny spells — but there's a tendency for the cloud to thicken, with rain arriving towards the second half of the week.

live from london, this is bbc news. the united states has urged israel to do more to allow humanitarian access to gaza, as concern grows that supplies of fuel through rafah have stopped. a 71—year—old man has been

charged with the attempted murder of slovakia's prime minister, who remains in a critical condition in hospital after he was shot. and: president putin turns his focus to trade on the second day of his state visit to china, in the hope of getting a boost for russia's war. hello, and welcome to bbc news. i'm lukwesa burak. we begin in the middle east, where pressure is growing on israel to let more aid into gaza. washington is urging israel to do more to provide sustained humanitarian access — saying they're deeply concerned about reports of imminent famine. they've called for the rafah crossing to be reopened as soon as possible. egypt stopped allowing in supplies after israel seized control of the gaza side. the two countries have blamed each other for its continued closure.

speaking at a news conference,