Report
Finns identify with the Ukrainian cause and revisit bad memories
Audio 01:19
In downtown Helsinki, Finland.
via REUTERS-LEHTIKUVA
Text by: RFI Follow
1 min
The history of Ukraine, which resists Moscow to defend its lands, is also that of Finland.
In the province of Karelia, near the Russian border, the inhabitants remember the conflict which opposed them to the Soviet Union, during the Second World War.
And for some, the wounds are still open.
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From our special correspondent in Helsinki
,
Frédéric Faux
From Mia's house, you can see the Russian border, a few hundred meters away, marked by a strip of cleared land.
His grandparents also lived there, four kilometers to the east.
But their farm was annexed after the Second World War by the Soviets, like most of Karelia, which then represented 10% of Finnish territory.
My family lived there for generations, and they had to leave their house twice.
It no longer exists.
Everything was burned.
I know how hard it was for them, and it touches me a lot: 430,000 people had to leave their homes in Karelia
Like the Ukrainians today, the Finns valiantly resisted the Red Army for over a hundred days.
So inevitably, in Finland, we identify with the Ukrainian cause.
Unprecedented demonstrations take place in front of the Russian embassy in Helsinki, and the population multiplies donations and offers of assistance.
“
We don't have any hatred towards the Russians, but we understand how the Ukrainians are feeling at the moment, when they have to leave their homes, without knowing if they will come back
”.
Barely ten days after the Russian invasion, the country's major NGOs claimed to have already collected more than 10 million euros.
►Read again: In Finland, Russians are still joining the EU by the Saint Petersburg-Helsinki train
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