Finnish Institute of International Affairs

Today's topic is Russia's relationship with Northern Europe and in particular with Finland.

guest is Hiski Haukala, who is director of the Finnish Institute of International Affairs.

His illustrious academic career, but also worked in the Finnish government as a member of the policy planning staff, as advisor to the foreign minister.

And then most recently throughout Russia's invasion of Ukraine, he was the chief of staff to the Finnish president, Sauli Ministo.

I'm somewhat blinded by the sparkle of your CV, so do forgive the squinting.

Uh, PhD in international relations and strategic geography, senior policy fellow for ECFR on Eastern Europe and Russia, Center for European Policy Analysis focusing on NATO's eastern flank, German Council on Foreign Institute- Relations, Finnish Institute of International Affairs, and the Polish one too.

Oh.

Uh, three years at GLOBSEC in Bratislava, regional advisor Ukraine, okay, Moldova.

And that was the other one of the significant undercurrents around it is that We can create all these great plans and all this modeling and all this pre-construction phase work, and it can just get completely exploded by the folks trying to deliver it if they have no idea exactly what they're supposed to be doing, what they're trying to accomplish.

So if you look at the FIIA's trades training program, and I'm happy to talk with anybody at depth about what it is, it starts off with the why, it starts off with the basic principles of building science.

And then it quickly turns it into an applied training.

So they're actually, it's not an abstract.