‘Well, we usually don’t start wars’: Finnish president quips as Biden suggests ‘everything should be left to Nordic countries’

Amid the deepening crisis in Ukraine, PresidentJoe Biden hosted his Finnish counterpart Sauli Niinistö for a summit at the White House on Friday.

And during brief appearance before cameras in the Oval Office, Mr Biden joked that the world would be a safer place if Scandinavian nations were in charge of global affairs.

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“You know my predecessor who sat in this seat, President Obama, used to say it would be alright if we left everything to the Nordic countries,” Mr Biden said.

“Well, we usually don’t start wars,” Mr Niinistö quipped.

While traditionally seen as a neutral party between Russian and the West, Finland is now actively considering joining Nato in defiance of threats from Vladimir Putin.

Mr Niinistö paid tribute to the bravery of the Ukrainian people resisting the increasingly barbaric Russian bombardment, and said he hoped to strengthen his country’s relationship with the US.

“We have a long-lasting partnership — very good relations — and I hope that during this meeting and discussion, we can strengthen them more between the United States and Finland and the Nordic countries all together,” he said.

Mr Biden described Finland as a “critical partner” to US efforts to combat the Russian war machine.

He said both parties had been working closely together throughout the crisis, and would be discussing a “united, transatlantic response” to the invasion.

Finland was invaded by the then-Soviet Union in the Winter War of 1939-1940, when Finnish troops and guerrilla fighters put up unexpectedly fierce opposition to invading Russian troops. The conflict ended with Finland ceding part of its territory to the Soviet Union. The League of Nations deemed the invasion illegal and expelled the Soviet Union.

The war gave rise to the name “Molotov cocktails” for homemade petrol bombs, a sarcastic Finnish response to false claims by the then Soviet foreign minister, Vyacheslav Molotov, that Russian pilots were merely dropping bread baskets – not bombs – on Finland.