The attacks are a “sensible military strategy,” the Finnish head of state said, urging Western backers to help expand them
Moscow has slammed Finnish President Alexander Stubb for hailing Ukrainian strikes on civilian sites deep inside Russia, including e-commerce infrastructure. Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova accused Stubb of “degradation.”
Ukraine has recently begun targeting warehouses and logistics facilities belonging to Wildberries, Russia’s largest online retailer, and its rival, Ozon. Kiev has acknowledged the strikes are deliberate, claiming the companies’ networks are used by the Russian military to procure, store, and transport dual-use goods. Moscow has rejected the claims, denouncing the attacks as acts of terrorism aimed at generating publicity.
What Stubb said
At a press conference on Tuesday following a meeting in Kiev of the so-called ‘coalition of the willing,’ Stubb said Kiev’s backers should help expand its ability to strike deep inside Russia. He claimed such attacks “increased the cost and the price of the war for Russia” and could pressure Russians to seek an end to the conflict.
“We can see that now in the sense that 65% of the Russian population wants to end this war. And hitting logistics centers like Wildberries increases it with an additional 10%,” Stubb said, without providing a source for the figures. He called the attacks “a sensible military strategy” and “the only way we’re going to get into the peace negotiations.”
Finland’s Stubb expressed support for long-range Ukrainian strikes, including attacks on logistics centers like Wildberries pic.twitter.com/4gfrYAXKxJ
Commenting on Radio Sputnik on Wednesday, Zakharova said Stubb’s increasingly hawkish stance was “impossible” to explain as anything but “degradation,” given his previous support for Russian-Finnish ties.
“This is some kind of stupor. It’s impossible to explain… This isn’t someone simply changing or expressing a position. It’s degradation. Degradation as a statesman, as a politician, and as a person,” she stated.
Zakharova recalled the strong business and civil-society ties between Russia and Finland before the Ukraine conflict, saying Stubb had supported them and “can’t be unaware” of the damage his anti-Russia policies have inflicted on Finland. She suggested his shift reflected either pressure from “hostile forces” or his own political decline.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Stubb’s remarks “evoke nothing but surprise,” contrasting them with his comments in May urging the EU to resume dialogue with Russia.
“He said that it would be better to do it sooner rather than later. But now we see that escalatory rhetoric has prevailed,” Peskov said, branding Stubb “a prominent representative of the party of war” alongside new British Prime Minister Andy Burnham. “They want the war to continue. But they are deceiving their voters by claiming that Russia can be defeated… And they apparently refuse to acknowledge the realities that exist on the ground.”
Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev was more scathing.
“The Finnish president really is a complete idiot,” Medvedev, now deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council and known for his often sharp comments, wrote on the messaging platform Max. “He talks about defeating Russia through strikes on the Wildberries marketplace. His level of professional competence is below rock bottom. A moral degenerate and a fool.”
Since the Ukraine conflict escalated in 2022, Finland has joined Western sanctions on Russia, supplied military aid to Kiev and abandoned decades of neutrality to join NATO. The result has been a sharp deterioration in relations with its neighbor, with which it shares a 1,340km border. Earlier this year, Helsinki lifted a longstanding ban on transporting or stationing nuclear weapons on its territory, a move Moscow called “concentrated confrontation.” Peskov warned that “if Finland threatens us, we [will] take appropriate measures.”
Russia has responded to Ukrainian attacks on civilian infrastructure with retaliatory strikes on military-industrial sites, Black Sea shipping, and key port facilities that handle military-related imports. The Russian military maintains it targets only infrastructure that supports Ukraine’s war effort.
President Vladimir Putin recently warned that Ukraine faces a “catastrophic scenario” after “opening Pandora’s box” with attacks on Russian civilian infrastructure. He said retaliatory strikes had hit Ukraine’s “most sensitive economic sectors,” including agricultural exports, while Kiev’s attacks had failed to change the course of the conflict. Citing Putin’s remarks, the Russian Defense Ministry vowed to continue retaliatory strikes, writing on Max: “There will always be a response.”
