The president of Finland on Sunday said he’s seen a change in behavior in Vladimir Putin — and it’s unpredictable.
In an interview on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Sauli Niinistö said the change, however, could be intentional.
“Even though I have met him several times during these 10 years and had several phone calls with him, it is — like we all know, it's very difficult to say and define what the other person actually deep down is,” Niinistö said.
“But so far I would say that he has behaved in a way which is very difficult to predict, but that might be, also, intentional — namely to behave in that way because that brings confusion to surroundings. We are a bit confused at the moment.”
According to Niinistö, the two leaders had a telephone talk “like we have had several ones during these years.”
“And when I took up the list of demands he had… we surely are going to keep our sovereignty and our rights to decide ourselves,” he recounted. “Then he suddenly, very officially, and I think he read the whole list of demands.”
“That was a change in his behavior.. and from that I guess that he wants, at least he wants to be very decisive, wants to sound like one,” he said. “It was a different kind of behavior.”
Niinistö said he believes we’re now in a post-Cold War era that’s even more chilly.
“I think that we are actually almost in a colder situation than we were during that traditional Cold War because then we had at least some agreements between the United States and Soviet Union, limiting arms and so on,” he said.
“Now we do not have actually anything, no agreements anymore. So this makes the situation in my opinion much more vulnerable.”
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Fran Beyer ✉
Fran Beyer is a writer with Newsmax and covers national politics.
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