The screen face who made numerous popular documentary programs about Russia has written a new book, which goes through the backgrounds and reasons why Russia attacked Ukraine.
Do you respect me? – the direct and threatening question is familiar to many people who have lived in Russia for a long time.
If you answer in the negative, there will be trouble ahead. An affirmative answer leads to a toast with the challenger.
– The cult of respect also applies to Russia as a state. In Russia, respect mixed with fear is considered higher-level and more long-lasting than that earned by good deeds, explains Tuominen.
– Fear is currently Russia’s most important export product.
Tuominen’s latest book Russia – Writings about Russia and Putin was created during Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine.
A moderate and versatile journalist familiar with the Russian way of life brings together his experiences with both opponents and supporters of the current Russian regime.
Sanctions unite people
In his book, Tuominen states that if policy change in Russia was already difficult before the attack on Ukraine, it has become even more difficult as a result of economic sanctions.
– Sanctions against ordinary Russians only strengthen the anti-West, when people take the fact that they cannot buy an iPhone in their home country as a personal insult, Tuominen points out.
– When the country is as if under siege, it further encourages nationalist feelings, and blames the problems on others.
As the horrors caused by war actions have been revealed, we Finns have been especially surprised by the support shown by ordinary Russians for Putin’s war policy.
Tuominen reminds that the Americans also initially supported the wars waged by the United States in Vietnam and Iraq.
– Citizens usually want to be on their own side in a war until the hostilities start to go completely to hell, he says.
One of the most popular Russian military ballads dates back to the 1980s and was originally called Hey Sister – Don’t Tell Mother I’m in Afghanistan.
Since then, the song has actually become a trilogy: in the Chechen wars, the melody remained, only the place names were changed, and now in the third version, body bags are sent home from Ukraine.
– It says that war is a normal state for Russians, when wars are fought from one generation to another. The fact that there is no war is abnormal in Russia, Tuominen acknowledges.
The background forces of the war of aggression
A Russian Nobel author who was previously praised in Western countries and even a decade ago in Finland Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008) is currently only favored by the Russian leadership.
– In a newspaper interview conducted in 2006, Solzhenitsyn claimed that southern and eastern Ukraine, the Crimean peninsula and Donbas have never belonged to historical Ukraine, and that the country is being taken as a NATO member against the will of the inhabitants of these regions, Tuominen writes.
The recent book extensively reviews the process and key figures who have shaped the Orthodox Church, Russian nationalism and imperialism into pillars of Putin’s Russia.
In the history papers, Tuominen finds a Putin-like figure in Emperor Nicholas I, who ruled Russia for thirty years, between 1825 and 1855.
– Nicholas I was cunning, cruel and stubborn and was not afraid of anything. In his time there was an industrial revolution and Russia did not succeed at all and the country turned inward. In Putin’s time, there is a post-industrial revolution, and Russia will not be successful in that either. When we drop out of international competition, then we isolate ourselves, Tuominen compares.
Power will change in 2024
Tuominen believes that if the hostilities in Ukraine have stopped by the spring of 2024, then power will change and Putin will leave the presidential election to younger people.
– First of all, Russia cannot withstand the next six years of isolation, and someone who has not been tainted by military actions, such as Putin’s inner circle, must be replaced, says Tuominen.
– The situation is similar to Leonid Brezhnev at a time when the war was going on in Afghanistan and society was at a standstill. Nothing will change as long as the geriatric gallery rules.
of the present, Nikolai Patrushev most of the members of the Russian Security Council headed by
In 2007, the highest representative of the Russian imperial Romanov family, the princess Maria Vladimirovna granted Patrušev a nobility that applies to all his family members.
Tuominen picked a surprising successor candidate for Putin from the next generation.
– One person whose place is clearly being played is the current Minister of Agriculture Dimitri Patrushev. The tsar’s flyskin cloak is already being dug out of mothballs, Tuominen predicts.
You can discuss the topic on 24.8. until 23:00.