The war in Ukraine dominated Finland President Sauli Niinistö’s New Year speech, with Russia’s aggression - and Europe’s response - weighing heavily on the president’s mind, writes yle.fi.

“The past year suddenly took us back to the past. To something that, generation by generation, we had begun to consider increasingly distant, and almost impossible in its irrationality. The horrors of a major war returned to Europe.

Russia had made a grave mistake, if it believed that Ukraine would be defeated quickly.

One cannot avoid thinking about the similarities the situation has with our Winter War when the Soviet Union assumed that they would march into Helsinki within two weeks. As leaders of a country under authoritarian rule, Stalin and Putin failed to recognise a key factor. The fact that people living in a free country have their own will and convictions. And that a nation that works together constitutes an immense force”, - said Niinistö.

He added that the outpouring of public support for Ukraine, and the way western countries have matched that support with concrete military and humanitarian aid, may also have been unexpected in Moscow.

“Putin likely expected support for Ukraine to dissipate quickly. Quite the opposite happened. Instead of only feeling empathy, we are deeply living through this with the Ukrainians. We have embraced the matter of the Ukrainians as our own. And the support for Ukraine only grows stronger“, - said Niinistö.