Helsinki Security Forum 2026: Friday livestream

HSF, can you hear me? Yes. HSF is about to begin, so please take your seats. We also kindly ask you to put your phones on silent. Thank you.

Please be ready to rise for the presidents of Finland and Moldova as they will arrive shortly.

My name is Karolina Piata. I'm a postdoctoral fellow at FIIA at our center on climate politics and security. I'll be your host today. I'm very delighted to be here and looking forward to all the discussions throughout the weekend. We have an excellent program lined up for the weekend. But before diving into this afternoon's program, just a few quick housekeeping notes, and then I promise we'll get to the interesting part.

First, please have your phones on silent throughout all the sessions. And while you're here, we would of course love to hear your thoughts and insights. So feel free to share them on social media using the hashtag HSF2026.

And finally, and most importantly, we welcome questions from the audience in person throughout most of the sessions. So if you would like to ask a question, just please raise your hand and wait for the microphone before starting to speak. We'll make sure that we'll arrive to you as soon as possible.

But without further ado, let's kick off Helsinki Security Forum 2026 with a short video introducing this year's theme, which is layers of security. After the video, we'll welcome on stage Hiski Hala, the director of the Finnish Institute of International Affairs. He will give his opening remarks before welcoming our high-level speakers on stage. Thank you.

This year would put Europe and us Europeans into a series of tests. Either we rise to the occasion and find solutions and ways forward together, or we will face increasing insignificance, even irrelevance.

Most definitely, Europe should be able to carry its own weight better than it's been able to.

The Euro-Atlantic security landscape is split.

This relationship existed before Trump. It'll exist after Trump. The combination of Putin and Trump has pushed Europeans to do what they should have been doing all along.

The European Union can do a lot when it comes to defense. It's much more important to focus on our own societies and unity within Europe.

Ukraine understands the new way of war better than anyone else.

We of course have our multi-layered capabilities which we are using in all domains.

President of the Republic of Finland, President of the Republic of Moldova, President of Ukraine over the remote connection, ministers, excellencies, distinguished guests, people following the live stream remotely, dear friends of Helsinki Security Forum, a warm welcome to Helsinki Security Forum 2026.

My name is Hiski Hala, the director of the Finnish Institute of International Affairs, and it is my distinct honor and pleasure to get this year's party started.

These days, celebration perhaps may not be the term that leaps to mind in conjunction with security, but at least for FIIA, this is the case. This year marks the 65th anniversary of the institute and the fifth anniversary of this forum.

But FIIA and the forum celebrate by doing what we do best: providing clear-eyed analysis of world affairs and facilitating an open forum for debates that invite us to think critically about important matters dealing with security, while fostering the badly needed common ground and understanding.

It seems safe to say that during these five years, Helsinki Security Forum has established its footing on the frantic security forum circuit. Old friends of the forum keep coming back to Helsinki, and every year new friendships are formed. You are all most welcome.

But keeping your faith in us requires that we find the appropriate niche for the forum. In my opening remarks a year ago, I stated how we do not want the HSF to be yet another forum for debating only the most burning issues of the day. Although that too will be done, we want the forum to challenge people to raise their sights to the horizon while also raising issues that are overlooked in our current debates, so that we all feel forewarned and forearmed for the world that awaits us.

Last year, under the title Our Hour of Europe, we challenged people to think how Europe could and should rise to the occasion of rapidly shifting sands of security. The year that followed could indeed be described as a process of trial and error, where the Europeans have sought to find the answers and responses to this very challenge.

This year, we invite you to think about the sources of security and the role of agency in ensuring it. We argue that the rapid change and the consequent turbulence in world politics challenges the idea of single solutions to security. Instead, we need a layered approach where security stems from a messier, more like structure.

This calls for determined and, in the case of Europe, also concerted agency. Pockets of stability and calm in the world today are not brought about automatically, but they must actively be upheld and generated. In short, we need active layers of security.

This year's forum is once again bigger, and I dare to say better than before. When preparing for this event, we have felt the positive buzz and excitement around the forum. We are happy and grateful for this positive interest, and we are confident that the event will live up to your expectations. With these words, I declare the forum opened.

Ladies and gentlemen, I now warmly welcome the first speaker of the forum, a true layer of security, President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, who is joining us via remote connection.

Mr. President, it's good to see you again. I hope you can hear us.

It's good to see you. I can hear you loud and clear. Can you hear me? Do you have the interpretation?

Yes, Mr. President. Both are working in fine order. We are honored that you have wanted to join this opening session via a remote connection, and Mr. President, you have promised to answer a couple of questions to kick off our debates.

I'm open to any questions, but first and foremost, if I may, to thank you, say thank you for this invitation. And it's a great pleasure for me, and I want to thank Finland and your people. I want to thank President Alexander.

We have a wonderful relationship, and I want to thank your government officials and the prime minister for the fact that throughout these almost five years of this war, you stand together with us, with Ukraine. They have supported us by various means, from military support to energy support.

In times of massive attacks against our energy and objects that are very important for life-sustaining efforts, I'm proud that the Ukrainian people have such friends as the people of Finland, and I'm also aware that my son is present there. We're always supporting Moldova as well. I'm glad to see you too.

Thank you, Mr. President. The first question, if I may. The theme of this year's Helsinki Security Forum is layers of security. This draws attention to the need to act in ways that restore or enhance our security. What would be your advice to the international audience gathered here today? How could and how should we act right now?

Thank you for this question. I have experience of contemporary Ukraine. Unfortunately, experience related to warfare. And because of this experience, we have a clear view of the priorities. In my view, a state, if it truly seeks to be protected, it must think of its inner strength and be strong inside first and foremost.

The main guarantee for Ukraine is the army of our state, and countries are different. But the main thing is the spirit, the unity, the experienced commanders, modern commanders. And we now have in our army a generation of young people who were growing up in this war, and it's not that somebody has simply given them something or 20 years have passed and they became famous generals. No.

They rose up from sergeants, junior lieutenants, from soldiers. They became senior commanders and generals.

What I want to say is an experienced army, an army that is highly technological. That is my second point: that mil-tech sector within your state, military industry, the defense industrial base, that speaks to the point that if you want to go very quickly, it doesn't have to be purely state-owned or privately owned. This is a mix, and our defense is mostly private now. And when we want it to move quickly, it can move quickly.

Now, when we speak about inner resilience and when we want to be modern, it's energy security. So this industry has to be decentralized. And by the way, Finland has such experience, and we're grateful for the fact that Finland is co-leading in the coalition of shelters, and it is truly valuable. It's very important that people can count on it when danger arrives, and we are still lacking some shelters in some communities. It is a serious challenge.

So security is of utmost importance, and undoubtedly the production lines, when we're now talking about defense and we have deficit and we have massive attacks, you cannot simply defend yourself by buying certain things or by having a certain number of air defense assets. No, you cannot build total defense with that. No, you need to have the technologies and the production lines, and of course this has to be shared, and Ukraine is sharing its experience that it gained in this war.

So here we're moving on to the second cluster. To be strong inside and to have your own security guarantees is also insufficient because you don't know which threat you may face. It can be a global threat or it can be something like with Russia that is many times bigger than Ukraine. But international support is of utmost importance. And here I'm grateful to the European Union in the first place and to everybody in Europe and the United States because they started helping Ukraine after the outbreak of the war.

So this international resilience is very important. It means financial support. It means support with technologies. We have received certain weaponry that we did not have, NATO-standard weapons. But now we are signing drone deals already, and we are sharing our experience that we have with pleasure, and it is an entirely just way to share it with the countries that have helped us and that keep helping us.

And President Stubb and I have signed in New York this specific agreement, drone deal. It's not about just selling or buying drones or missiles. It's about sharing your experience, security experience, throughout the duration of this agreement. And we will do this with pleasure together with Finland because there is trust between us, and I'm grateful that we have managed to build such relationship between our countries.

And third thing is NATO, and here I can only congratulate Finland because you have received these security guarantees, both EU and NATO. These are allies. Allies in economy, allies in technology, and allies in security. This is of utmost importance. This is what Ukraine is counting on.

I'm sure that this challenge is a shared challenge for all of us in Europe. And I think that under any threats, we will strengthen both EU and NATO. And we will strengthen one another. Now we are facing attacks against data centers, hybrid warfare, against our cell network, logistics, railway. All of that is blocked. And these are challenges. And I don't wish this experience upon anybody. But we do have this experience because of the war. And I think that this experience can only strengthen partners.

Thank you. Thank you, Mr. President, for these words of wisdom and advice purchased with such a terribly high cost. Ukraine is not only waging a war, but it is also building a future for itself, seeking to join the European Union as soon as possible. Joining the EU is a demanding and often a time-consuming process. Ukraine is implementing reforms while waging a full-scale war, a task that is very, very ambitious. So if I may ask you, Mr. President, what are the most significant hurdles on Ukraine's path to EU accession?

Putin. Putin. That's a fair point, because he really doesn't want that to happen. And it's not about his opinion. It's about what he's doing for this not to happen. Against the development of our state, against the choice, geopolitical choice of the people. And you know, this is a major challenge. He's a big threat.

Sometimes you wish for not having border with Russia because that's very dangerous. An independent Ukraine, strong Ukraine, is a big problem for Putin. And we're seeing it now that Ukraine is a big problem for... And you know, yesterday, I think it was yesterday, that he had that forum in Moscow, and I think that there were important answers there to the whole world and to the United States in the first place, and to some skeptics in Europe. There were important signals yesterday.

I think it wasn't that he said that on purpose that Ukraine is not a state and it's not an independent state. So what are we talking about, that other states are waging war with Russia using Ukrainians? So sometimes he is signaling these things, but yesterday he was very confident in that message, and nobody stops him in these messages, and that is weakness of the world.

Why? Because back in 2005, if I'm not mistaken, as a leader of Kremlin, he said that the biggest tragedy of the 20th century was the collapse of the Soviet Union. If you remember that. So I think that it was in 2005 that he gave an answer regarding his goals. Please pay attention to the fact that he did not say about the First World War as a tragedy. He did not recognize Second World War to be... and I'm not even mentioning other wars. He could have mentioned Afghanistan and other... Chernobyl disaster, a horrible disaster.

So he mentioned none of the things that were connected to a human. He recalled the USSR as the main collapse in the 20th century. Therefore, his goal is obvious: to bring it all back, to bring the USSR back. So his goal is not the east of Ukraine, not Donbas. His aim is to occupy all our state.

And the fact that he was saying again yesterday that serves as yet another proof regarding his desires for peace and an end to the war. And even if he seeks that, then at what price? It's undoubtedly about bringing back the influence of the USSR or Russia's influence, but to make it on par with the former USSR influence. So that is occupation of Kazakhstan, he has total clout over Belarus, but I'm sure that he wants all of that back.

So therefore, these challenges with the Baltic states and influencing countries with which he has shared borders. So I think that the skepticism, we have to get through it when we're talking about what EU means for Ukraine. It's a victory over Russia, even a victory over Putin, because the EU is the choice of our people. And therefore, it's important to have security guarantees because this guarantees our path that the people of Ukraine have chosen.

Thank you. Thank you, Mr. President. Final question. This is a conference of international security experts. So in your view, if I may, if you could summarize in one sentence, what should the role of the expert community be in times like this that we're living?

The role of the experts, with all due respect, is to not be in the middle between good and evil, between the occupier and the victim. Nobody needs mediation between life and death, between those who want to live in freedom and democracy and autocracy. Such mediation does not work now. Mediation with dictators is not working because we always want to find a compromise, and a dictator is always in a stronger position than the victim.

Because we are a victim. Any state that is free, democratic, and European between us, because to be strong, it has to be supported, and that's important. In my view, an international community must protect any state that is free against any aggression that is unjust.

Thank you, Mr. President. On behalf of the Helsinki Security Forum, I would like to take this opportunity to convey our heartfelt thanks and our very best wishes to you and the heroic people of Ukraine. Thank you so very much for this, Mr. President.

And ladies and gentlemen, next I call on the stage the patron of the forum, President of the Republic of Finland, Alexander Stubb, and President of the Republic of Moldova, Maia Sandu. They will be joined by the Economist, geopolitics editor, David Rennie, and together they will kick off the first debate in what is said to be an exciting Helsinki Security Forum. The floor is yours.

Good afternoon. Is that working? Yeah. Good afternoon. Thank you very much for joining us. I'm not going to bother with introductions. You know exactly who these two very distinguished people are, and we have a lot of important ground to cover. And President Sandu, I wonder if I could begin with you, because you join us from Moldova, a country that is on a very particular front line in the confrontation, the security challenge from Russia. You're on a political cognitive front line with Russia. So help us understand from your perspective, as someone who has literally fought off a Russian disinformation campaign to sustain democracy and win office, what are the practical lessons that Moldova, that you can offer this room when it comes to fighting on that sort of terrain?

First of all, thank you for the invitation. It's a pleasure to be here and to speak about Moldova's experience and to have the opportunity to express our gratitude for the support of Moldova, but also for the support to Ukraine. Moldova enjoys peace today thanks to the courage of the Ukrainian people, of the Ukrainian leadership, and thanks to the support that you and many other friends of Ukraine have been providing.

Moldova has its role in providing stability and security, or contributing to the stability and security in the region. Even though we are a small country, but by preserving our sovereignty and by remaining part of the democratic world, we are helping, because otherwise, if we would have allowed Russia to get to control power in Moldova, you could imagine what the situation would look today, given that Moldova has a pretty long border with Ukraine, 1,200 kilometers, and you can imagine what Russia could have done to Ukraine using the Russian proxies in Moldova.

So the cognitive war, and not just the cognitive, because we have experienced a wide range of mechanisms or tools used by Russia and its hybrid war, and we have seen this especially before the elections, but it continues after the elections. So it's energy blackmail. We don't depend on Russian gas anymore, but they've tried to use it. We do not depend on Russian trade, but at some point we had quite a big share.

And when Russia does not have these tools anymore to just switch off the gas, then it employs a lot of other instruments. In our case, this was dirty money to try to corrupt politicians, to try to finance political campaigns. These were attempts to even bribe voters. These were cyber attacks. This was trying to shut down the... so the false bomb alerts during the day of the election, and then of course a lot of disinformation and manipulation.

What we did, we exposed it together with the press. So it was a whole-of-society response. We exposed it, and people could see how Russia was working. It was easier because in the case of Moldova, Russia's interference has been brutal. It was difficult to deal with, but it was easier to expose it. In other countries, you're not going to see such evident attempts by Russia to interfere.

But it is important to show that it was the government working together with all the institutions, because when you deal with Russian money which Russia is using in your elections, you need to have everybody: the agency for fighting the money laundering, you need to have the intelligence service, you need to have the tax inspectorate, you need to have the police. So it has to be a very well-coordinated effort by all the institutions, and it has to be a very good communication for the people to see the risks, because if they don't see the risk, then it's very difficult for them to protect themselves and their votes.

Thank you. So, President Sandu just laid out, I guess, you know, the good news of being attacked so brutally and obviously is it's not deniable, sort of this sort of ambiguous attacks. But speaking as president of Finland, you know, we all see the headlines about these hybrid attacks and then the kind of the danger, the difficulties of attribution. How seriously do you take these attacks that we're seeing all over Europe at the moment, things like Leipzig, and what practically can governments like yours and others do to really impose pain back on Russia, deter Russia?

Well, starting point is to say that we obviously take them very seriously, and I think in today's world, the problem might be that the line between war and peace has been blurred. So you don't know exactly what is an act of war versus what is not. The way in which I like to divide it is to say that the warfare that Russia is conducting in Ukraine is kinetic, traditional warfare, but what it's conducting in Europe is hybrid, and hybrid has many different elements. So you have daily cyber attacks, you have sabotage attempts, as we saw in Leipzig, and which were then attributed.

You have information war, which Maya was alluding to, and what we have to understand is that these are not one-off attempts from the Russian side, but they're actually a campaign, and the aim of that campaign is to destabilize us mentally and otherwise, to make sure that we don't support Ukraine. Then you have some countries where people might be scared, and then you have others like my own where people actually get more resolve.

And the big worry I have right now is that Russia is increasing the risk level at what they're doing. And then you ask, what can you do? Well, you can never defend yourself 100% from that. So this is not like a missile where you have an anti-missile coming at it, because sometimes it's quite sketchy. Sometimes, and most of the time, Russians actually use proxies. So the defense mechanisms are quite limited.

But I think the key is to, well, two latest examples: Leipzig airport, Germany recognizes who it is, makes sure that that's the case, and then they attribute and take measures, consulates, for instance. Or the second case was with a defense industry company in Estonia. Again, Estonia attributes. But I think the final point I want to make here is that it does require a lot of mental resilience from individuals around Europe, including, of course, my countrymen here in Finland, and understanding that this is an ongoing campaign, and then trying to find the right pitch at which you then react to it.

Can I ask a quick follow-up in terms of, I remember talking to a NATO official who said, you know, the problem we have in terms of hitting back at Russia is we're not going to blow up their sort of shopping centers or airports. That's not who we are. But there was a piece, I hate to give publicity to the Financial Times because obviously you should all be reading the Economist, not the Financial Times. But there was a piece by Sasha Gobev, great guy, talking about the one thing you can do is you can say to the Russians, if you keep this up as you escalate, you are going to see more and more help for Ukraine because Ukraine is doing the fighting. Is that actually a good political...

Yeah, I think that's the basic message that we also want to give, that, you know, the more you intimidate, the more you threaten, the more you act, the more we're going to end up supporting Ukraine. And I do think that's the right approach to do. And then, of course, there are two ways of doing it. One is that you do it publicly, and the other one is that you do it diplomatically, basically under the radar. And I think we need to use both instruments.

Can I ask both of you the same question? Because I was really struck that the title of this panel that was chosen by FIIA was talking about after the war, and of course that doesn't mean that we're complacent about how bad things are right now. But as we see the news of not just the threats to Europe, the hybrid attacks, the even more extreme language about Kaliningrad, nuclear weapons, but also this really brutal autumn heading to a nasty winter that Ukraine is going into, the sheer viciousness of the attacks on civilian targets in Ukraine.

Clearly, that's difficult for what's happening right now. That makes in the short term managing this conflict all the more painful. But what about the longer-term consequences? Because all wars end one day. Is there a problem for governments like yours, both of yours, that as Putin drenches himself in more and more blood and more and more openly commits war crimes, that that complicates what will eventually be a process? You will need to manage relations with Russia in some way after this war. So is that the longer-term challenge that comes from this short-term crisis of extreme violence on the Russian side? President Sandu, how do you see that from Moldova?

Well, I am definitely more concerned with what's going to come next now, and of course we're very concerned with the situation in Ukraine this winter because it is clear that it's going to be very, very difficult. I'm concerned with the situation in my own country because in addition to all the problems and the very, the bigger number of violations of our airspace, just in the last week we had seven or eight Russian drones violating our airspace, and of course this creates security risks. In addition to that, the energy prices which went up significantly and so on.

So, short-term concerns are very big on our agenda. But if we want to talk about what happens after the war ends, I think it's very clear that Russia will continue to be a major source of instability for many years to come, regardless of whether Putin is still there or not after this war. And I think we just need to keep this in mind. This is not just a short-term challenge or a mid-term challenge. We have to make sure that we are better prepared, all of us, than we were before Russia's invasion.

And this means Europe needs to be strong militarily. We should all understand that Ukraine is going to be a very important pillar of the security in Europe. And talking to Russia, yes, at some point, but from the position of strength, with one voice, and making sure that Russia is held accountable for all the crimes it has been doing and all the things that it has been doing to Ukraine during these years.

So I'm coming back to his question on experts. I have to admit that, you know, had you asked me that question three years ago when I was at the European University Institute in Florence, it would have been much easier for me to give a blunt answer of what I think of the security structure of Europe post the war. But when you become president, you lose all of your expertise. So let me give it a try.

I think we try to look at it from two perspectives which are chronological. One is short-term. So what can we do to make sure that Ukraine can preserve its independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity? And there are really short-term three messages that both Maya and I got when we were in Kyiv three, four weeks ago was number one, air defense, number two, electrical or energy installments, and then number three, finances.

So these are the types of things, you know, messaging with Vladimir today about a few things that we are working on right now. So this is a short-term kind of thing. Then of course the second one is a long-term. Well, from long-term, it's always good to look at the facts on the ground. What was the aim of Putin and Russia? The aim was to deny the independence of Ukraine and make it Russian. Well, it became European. The aim was to prevent NATO from enlarging. Well, Finland and Sweden would have never joined had the full-blown attack not taken place.

And the aim was to reduce the defense budgets of European states. And look what's happened. We're moving towards 5%. So I think the power balance in Europe will be very different after the war is over to what it is now. And on top of that, we have the most modern and effective and experienced army in Ukraine. So that means that the whole security scene of Europe will have changed probably in a way in which Russia did not want.

And then we come to, okay, what do we do? Well, probably what we need to do is to think about how that power balance remains and what kind of a dialogue can we have at that stage. I think we will be in a much, much, much stronger position, say in 2027, 2028, I don't know when this war is going to end, than we are today. And when we all do this, we always prepare for the day after and the long term, because one thing that I do want to remind everyone is that the Russian military was not capable of modern warfare when this war began, but now they are.

So they are also going to be much stronger when they regroup after the war. So there are a lot of balances that we're going to have to deal with. Our relationship with Russia will be very different. But I believe in the long run in diplomacy, and that's something that we need to work on, and I stress in the long run.

So can I pick you up on that? Because I think, look, I think the point of having journalists moderate is that we're meant to ask kind of awkward questions. And so I totally understand the logic of the sort of the security balance of power that you can have the balance of, you know, deterring the future Russia aggression that you talk about. But on that diplomatic track that you describe, I was just in Stockholm interviewing their prime minister, and on the social democratic side, I was struck by the extreme clarity with which they now say, we do not imagine trusting Russia for the foreseeable future, certainly as long as Vladimir Putin is in charge.

But then the next breath they say, and actually when the war ends, which we hope happens as soon as possible, that's when the politics gets really hard because there will be voices in some bits of Europe saying we need to normalize relations with Russia. And we see President Trump has just invited President Putin to attend the G20, which is going to be a very difficult moment for many other countries. So on that political diplomatic track, given the escalation and the violence we're seeing from President Putin now, that political diplomatic track after the war, how is this being complicated by, you know, this path of, you know, the degree to which Putin is willing to take himself off into this very, very dark place?

Yeah, I think our Swedish colleagues are absolutely right. This is not going to be an easy solve, and it's actually going to be a big ask because we don't know exactly what the relationship will be with Russia after the war is over. All I'm saying is that there will have to be some kind of a relationship, and I say this, of course, as a bordering country with 1,340 kilometers of border with Russia. So there are issues that, for practical and other reasons, will have to be solved, and a lot of it will, of course, depend on Russia.

In other words, what kind of a Russia are we dealing with? And I fully agree with Maia. We're probably not going to be dealing with traditional liberal democracy, which will be abiding to international rules, institutions and norms. I think G20 is actually quite short-term, and there I would assume the aim of President Trump is to get President Trump, President Putin and President Zelensky to sit around the same table, and that is exactly what President Zelensky wants. So that's kind of the short-term.

But I think you mentioned one key word which we should all keep in mind, and that is trust. The problem is that there has been one of the most serious breaches of trust between what we call traditional West and Russia because of Russia's full-blown attack on Ukraine, and because it violates every tenet of the UN Charter. And building trust always takes much longer than the collapse of trust. So that's why I think we are just in the long haul.

President Sandu, can I ask you about EU, the path to Europe, and countries like Moldova which wish to be anchored in Europe, anchored in the West by European membership? How clear and how short does that path have to be for us to be keeping a promise to, you know, when we see those wonderful images of young people in the square in Chisinau or in Tbilisi or in Kyiv waving European flags, we know what they're saying. We know what they're standing for. We wish them well. But does it have to be full membership? Does it have to be full membership soon? What sort of promise do we need to be making about the European perspective?

It has to be full membership. It has to be merit-based, as it was promised, and it's not in the interest of EU to have these gray areas because this is about security. So enlargement is the best investment in the Europe security. And again, we're not asking for shortcuts, but at the same time, when we meet the commitments, then we have to see that EU is also moving forward.

And for us, a small country, we have increased our resilience and we have been working hard and so on, but it's not easy when you see Russia's intimidation attempts every day, and then you have the promise of EU, but then at some point this promise becomes too far, and then if it is too far, then Russia's intimidation attempts might be more efficient. So it has to happen. It has to be merit-based.

But there is an opportunity now. We have a commission which is committed to the enlargement. We have the European Parliament which is committed to the enlargement, and we need to move now. We need to move fast before Russia tries to use one or another country against Europe, in our case also against Ukraine.

President. Yeah. I mean, I want to support and piggyback on what Maya said. I think this enlargement round where we now have four candidates is strategically one of the most important and probably from a security perspective the most important that we have ever had. And the worry that I sometimes have is that we only look at the Western Balkans as the possible sort of inflection point for enlargement not advancing, or we only look at Ukraine.

But then squeezed in between, we forget that the fight for the hearts and minds of Western liberal values is front and center in a country like Moldova. And that's why getting Moldova into the European Union will be a clear message and sign to those who don't believe in the values that we stand for. I think that enlargement is nowadays much more strategic than what it used to be. And this is the mindset that I think a lot of European countries and the European Commission should have.

So I think in my thinking, more is more when it comes to enlargement, but of course merit-based.

So can I just ask a quick follow-up, play my kind of difficult journalist role here, that you make that look, the strategic case is incredibly clear for enlargement, for Moldova, for Ukraine, for the others, but we also all know that getting into the European Union involves very serious pooling of sovereignty. You know, a Ukrainian judge has to have the same credibility as a Finnish judge, and that is a very high bar to reach. And so there are clearly governments around the table when you go to the European Council who don't take exactly the same view.

And we have the French who have to have a referendum now, that's in their constitution. So if we tell people that the path is full membership for strategic reasons, but don't pay attention to the very hard politics, are we in danger of not telling the truth to some of these candidate countries?

First of all, I don't go to the European Council, that's the private prerogative, so I leave him to study my constitution. I have the easy job, I can just talk here, and he has to go do the real business. But no, the bottom line here is that it's always a balance, and I was actually in the European Court of Justice on Wednesday in Luxembourg meeting the Finnish judge.

I always have as a starting point that yes, you need to fill the acquis communautaire issues that have to be dealt with, for instance in Ukraine, linked to the rule of law, corruption, or say agriculture. But my main point is that Europe has historically been flexible, and I don't say this just because I wrote my PhD on differentiated integration, but already in the 1980s there were hundreds of examples of directives, regulations, derogations, and time limits for member states at the time.

So these are negotiable at the end of the day, but the big picture needs to be clear. My big worry is that countries in the Western Balkans, Moldova, or Ukraine will start turning against the whole process of European integration if they do not get a clear perspective of it. And I fully also understand that then we might have to deal with a referendum in France and other things. But I think we need to work towards that end, and I think actually the window of opportunity will be quite limited.

I'm not saying it closes when the war in Russia ends. As you could hear Zelensky saying, what's his biggest impediment to enlargement is Putin. So it's just we have to think strategically on this. That's my only message, and I fully understand every problem that entails, and I do that, and I say this as an institutional nerd.

And you can always have safeguards there, you know, for us, for the new members, if they believe that there are still some issues and you need to show track record and so on, they can always have the safeguards. But we need to know that EU integration is real, because last time before the parliamentary elections, some people asked me what's going to be Putin's revenge if we choose EU, and I told them no matter what's the revenge, we have EU on our side.

But for the next elections in a couple of years, people need to see that since the government has delivered and the EU has been saying that Moldova has delivered technically, EU should also make the necessary steps, because otherwise people will wonder whether EU is still there for Moldova or this is just a promise that will not happen, and then it's going to be easier for Russia to say, see, EU was never serious about enlargement, and we do represent a big danger for you, and you have to listen to us if you don't want to end up in big trouble.

And David, if I may just add, you know, we all know that foreign policy is at least about values and interests. So on values, I think it's morally right for a country like Ukraine, Moldova to get into both NATO and the European Union. But in terms of interest, I think people need to start seriously thinking what will be one of the strongest security guarantees for Europe in the future.

And I would argue that it is the military of Ukraine. It is the most modern military force that we have in Europe today. It is a buffer zone and an impediment for the potential of Russian aggression. So we need to think big on the security issue as well.

And if you have that strong military, you certainly want them to be on our side. So it's much better to have them on our side, and I think they will be from here until the end.

President Sandu, President Stubb, thank you so much for sharing your time with us this afternoon. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

So we're going to go straight into our next panel once the presidents, I think, have left. We have a panel with the foreign ministers of Finland and Lithuania coming up. I'm staying on stage, and please come and join us. Thank you very much. Hello. Thank you so much. Please.

So, absolutely fantastic to have you here, and we've had a really good high-level kickoff from the presidents, but there's some really kind of crunchy stuff that I would like to get into because I think the value of this kind of conference is that this is not just about kind of empty talking points, that we can get into some very sort of crunchy serious issues.

And I think you can see from the titles that FIIA has given these sessions that they want them to be extremely focused on, in this case, the frontline states and the future of security and preparedness. And so I wonder if we could begin with this question of Western unity and the idea that, you know, right now we see constant kind of jumpiness around things like, you know, even the last couple of days we have seen press reporting that Elbridge Colby, the undersecretary of policy at the Pentagon, is going to hold a meeting of the B5 format.

So Finland gets to go, Norway, Sweden, Germany, Poland, the Netherlands, but the Baltic states do not get to go, Britain doesn't get to go, France doesn't get to go. And so there's kind of a sense, an uneasy sense that America is dividing NATO members into kind of good and bad, Europe into good and bad. Is this the kind of thing that worries capitals at the moment? Are you concerned that beneath the kind of...

The happy talk about European unity — that there are signs that there are forces that can see dividing lines in Europe. Can I start with you? Your country is, I believe, not invited to go to this format.

Yeah, thank you for the question, and I would start from the very idea of trust that was already mentioned here in the previous panel. We have this skepticism and then lack of trust among each other, and especially now as the new wave of skepticism towards transatlantic relations is ongoing. So in each step we are trying to look for something, you know, defective or something not working, something is not good there, and in some situations it is absolutely not in place. So like in this situation of the Bergen format meeting, it's not the first time they meet. The very idea is to discuss how the European conventional strengths will be developed and how US troops can be replaced by some European deployment. And this is the format of these countries, the ones that are also debriefed than the others. So when you see it and interpret it from the position of trust in what is happening, the picture is different when you think that something is wrong there and behind our backs — that is then again a different picture. So in this particular process I don't see any big obstacles or problems, but there are some other processes where I see those challenges in getting things straight, and especially when we see some attempts to have the internal discussions, you know, how to organize some meetings with Russia, for example, or something else. So then I think we need absolute clarity and openness, and that happens more often within the EU or European framework when we are dealing with non-EU countries than with NATO. And in general, in NATO, for me the things are clearer than the ones that are in EU because we have the very clear idea about the collective defense and then how the deterrence works. What's the role of US and extended nuclear deterrence? What's the future role of the European conventional leg? And we put everything in NATO capability targets, we have the homework, we have the means, and then now we have to go and implement them within the European project. You can take the security and defense board — this is lack of clarity. And where I see the absolutely converging of the interest and then clear position, that is on the very front line from Finland going down north, or within the Nordic-Baltic community, some other Baltic countries, neighboring Poland, Germany, but not continent-wide.

Minister, how do you see European unity, and is there fraying of any of that unity at the moment? Are there people trying to sort of pull you apart into different groups?

Well, outside powers are trying to pull Europe apart. There's nothing new about that. So the response by us European countries needs to be extremely clear. Of course, we are happy to work within all sorts of working groups and like-minded or less like-minded country groups. That is not a new phenomenon either. But we need to be clear-headed about, for instance, how important it is that NATO is not fragmented, that the European Union is not fragmented. Certainly for Finland, the European Union is the main organization for bringing forward the worldview which we hold and we think is the best one — the European way of life across all dimensions. So starting with, well, you can philosophically talk about the values, but starting with the single market and trade, which is everything which is needed and on which credible defense and security are built.

Can we talk about — because the exam question that we've all been set in this panel is to talk about security and preparedness in Europe. There's always been this kind of, you know, sense that, I guess certainly in Washington, that if you see people talking about security and defense in the European Union context, that's somehow kind of in competition with NATO. But is there actually quite a lot of work that the European Union can do in areas that NATO just doesn't have competence? So, you know, now we're in this world of hybrid warfare and sabotage attacks. You know, NATO doesn't talk to national police forces. NATO doesn't deal with civil society emergencies. Is there actually very useful complementary work that the European Union should do alongside NATO to fill some of those gaps, I guess, for security behind the border within the European Union? Could I ask both of you about that?

Yeah, for sure. And with our presidency that will start from the 1st of January, we will have also security-related priorities within the EU, and those will be first of all about defense, about the external borders, and about complementarity of EU to what NATO is doing. We don't need to duplicate the command structures, and that is why also the ideas about the European army are the ones to be discussed and implemented after we will fulfill everything that we committed within the NATO capability targets. And those areas for the European Union is the defense industry. We have the mechanism like EDP, we have the SAFE, we have the readiness plan also on military mobility, and there will be the package coming next semester and others related to strengthening the very front line with also the flagship initiatives of the Commission. So we should concentrate on this: what is for NATO, that is the hardcore defense, and we already put everything what is needed in our regional plans. And each time when I hear something, 'no, we have to do something else now, we have, you know, to have something, you know, self-reliant' — and what we exactly talking about, and who will pay for it? Because when we agreed on NATO capability targets, we already knew that it will cost up to 4% of our GDP within NATO. That was before Trump was elected and before 5% even popped up. So now when we see the defense spending — and I'm not talking about this country or my country with 5.4%, 4% of GDP for defense — you know, I raised this question: so how come you will implement both, and we will end up with the concepts? And we know that who is not buying our concepts and who doesn't believe our papers and ideas and everything — those are Russians. They believe what they see and then what we are building, and this is the steel and armor, and especially where you deploy them at the very border.

So Minister, in terms of practicalities, what would you like to see the EU doing?

Well, in the interest of time, I won't be repeating all of what Kaja Kallas said, but I'm obviously agreeing fully with her, and I also look forward to the Lithuanian presidency next year in the European Union. But certainly, the European Union does not need to and does not want to compete with NATO. I mean, it would not be in anyone's interest. The EU is a civilian organization. NATO is a military organization. Let's keep it that way. But at the same time, we do see that the dimensions of different threats towards societies and towards the European Union are very varied these days. There are quite so many security threats which are outside of the sort of traditional military realm, and even within the traditional military realm, there's so much we need to be doing in order to bolster security as a complement to the sort of core defense spending, which of course we need to be protecting as well.

Can I ask both of you about the politics and the security implications of these regional groupings, the Nordic-Baltics and others? I mean, should we actually think there's nothing to panic about? You know, of course it looks different to be in Portugal compared to being in Lithuania, and it's actually good practical politics that doesn't necessarily destroy European unity if you have groupings that just have different interests and different needs for security preparedness. How do you see — I'll start with Minister Fältin. How do you see the role of things like the Nordic-Baltics? What's their real sort of practical function?

Well, the Nordic-Baltic family is now perhaps closer than it's ever been. And truly, this security situation has of course bound us together, and quite so often within this family. I call it family for the reason as well that quite often I see these friends of mine more often than my true family. So that's for one. But the second thing is I wouldn't necessarily agree that we do assess the threats so completely differently from the different geographic locations. Actually, Paulo Rangel, our colleague from Portugal, will be visiting me on Monday. I very much look forward to that. And he's been extremely concerned by the threat that Russia is posing. For instance, in West Africa, all the military coups Russia has been organizing to cause havoc and social unrest which would lead to migration waves towards Europe. And again, we know what kind of political implications uncontrolled migrant migration waves do have in Europe. And that certainly is a significant part of Russia's playbook in terms of how to destabilize Europe. So in a way, if you look more closely, we do have a very similar picture of what is actually behind the thinking and the threat that all of these autocracies are posing — Russia with its friends. So in many ways we do think the same way, but of course, since we are all democracies in Europe, we need to communicate with our voters and we have to be able to convince them why certain defense spending is important despite petrol prices going up and hampering the living standards of the normal woman.

Let me just pick up on that word democracy and a question to both of you before we go to questions from the room. You know, if you're looking at other ways in which your family is going to need to huddle together, you may find yourselves huddling together because there are other countries in the rest of Europe that through the magic of democracy are going to elect pro-Russian parties or parties that take very different views, because you have lots of populist nationalist parties out there in some big important countries coming up in that world. If you have much less unity around the table of the European Council at that point, what is the role of something like a regional family like the Nordic-Baltic? I'll start with you, but I'd like to hear both of you.

There is a big role, and once again, within the NATO planning and also within the European Union policies and our new projects with concern strengthening the front line, we're in a very unique geopolitical and time position as the Nordic-Baltic countries. We are close to our adversary, to Russia. So we are more aware about the threats because there was never doubt about the agreed intelligence assessment. I spent years dealing with it. So we all see the same. Then political layer: so what do we do about it, whether it is important or not, how high it is in our priority list. So then we differ. So within this group of countries, NB8, we do not differ in our policy assessment. So we are close to Ukraine. So we can assist Ukraine, and we do that — you know, in absolute numbers and in comparative numbers, the highest number, they are the highest. So with the production close to Ukraine, also with the lessons learned in Ukraine being adapted in a peace time with us, and also we have the very vibrant economies and a lot of talent. So thinking about the future, that would be the laboratory for the defense industry and also for the best resilience policies and tools to be implemented. And here is our role then to convey this politically to the broader group of countries, because it is not only our responsibility to strengthen the border and to strengthen the front line. It's like living on the top floor of the house and when the roof is leaking. So who will pay for all of it when it is a multi-store apartment? Of course, not only the ones that are living on the top floor.

Minister Fältin, I'm just going to ask the kind of difficult political question at this. I mean, is there also a need to — you know, you have to proof your security policies, but do you have to AFD-proof and Le Pen-proof your policies too? Is that part of the political thinking on your side?

Let's think five years back. Where was European unity on the Russian threat? There weren't as many populists in power, but Europe was building a gas pipeline with Russia, wasn't it? And each and every European country thought that they had this special cuddly relationship with Moscow. No, I think we are in a pretty good place right now. And of course, we can sit around and think about all the upcoming elections in the coming months and years. And certainly, there's going to be a lot of trouble ahead, I'm sure. But I think we've come an extremely long way from where we were before this unfortunate and so sad full-scale invasion by Russia in Ukraine started. And even though I do hear voices from around Europe, from near and afar, that we should be reopening our ties with Russia and so on and so forth, and that probably will come latest on the day when there's some sort of a ceasefire peace deal — let's hope that they come soon — but still, there's no going back to what it was back then.

Thank you. That's a very good reminder that you don't need populists in power to do bad Russia policies. Can I take some questions from the floor? And I ask brief questions, not a speech, and please do identify yourself. We have some roving microphones. So we have a question here. Someone's coming to you with a microphone now. Thank you.

Good afternoon, Dr. Alexander Roller from Poland, Defense24. I would like to make a little follow-up about attribution, because Poland has a huge problem with hybrid attacks, and unfortunately almost 50% of perpetrators have Ukrainian citizenship. And even though we do know that they are being paid by Russians, for society it is quite challenging because each and every attack when it happens, then society thinks again Ukrainians. And as you mentioned, dear chairman, about elections — next year we have huge parliamentary elections. How would you deal with partners within the EU and also with society to convince them to support Ukraine when we have another hybrid attack, sabotage and cyber, and it's again Ukrainian citizens? Thank you.

So is there, you know, patience for Ukraine is not set in sort of — is not carved into granite. How do you handle that politics? Minister Fältin.

Well, my first attempt would be — I'm a classical liberal and I have no problems distinguishing between citizens and their government. And let's think about where again Ukraine was 10 years ago. 10 years ago, Ukraine was starting to become a transparent democracy, a kleptocracy which had unfortunately been under Soviet and Russian rule either explicitly or implicitly for not just decades but hundreds of years, right? But the people came to the street because they wanted freedom. Well, certainly not 100% of the Ukrainians, but the clear majority. And even though it has been extremely difficult and dire, increasingly so unfortunately, to live in Ukraine — not just the eastern parts but now also in the cities where Russia is continuing their brutal bombarding campaigns — the people have decided to stay because they want to fight for the freedom of their country. And yes, there are certainly citizens of Ukraine as well and from other countries who are willing to be paid by evil or collaborate with the forces which we perhaps don't agree with. But that doesn't make the destiny of Ukraine any less important than what it is from also our perspective, but certainly from the perspective of the Ukrainians who finally would deserve the freedom.

Minister, and I think that is worth putting time into deconstructing those operations that are kinetic in their origin, because especially the ones that are arson operations, assassination operations, and to see, you know, who was organizing them, who was conducting, who was recruiting the agents, handling them, and to show to the society with whom we are dealing. And I think when we put the hybrid just definition on all of them and put information, disinformation, for example, propaganda in the same line as those assassination attempts or the attempts to sabotage against the critical infrastructure like it was a railway in Poland, there is a mixture then — oh, maybe something is just happening there. So this is the military intelligence of Russia who is responsible for majority of these operations. This is GRU. And then I think this must be the criteria how we would put all this into the NATO realm. It's not only for EU to deal with it. You see, in GRU they have also the special forces, and we don't need only, you know, the officers to be present on our soil. They can be agents of theirs. So in Lithuania they conducted operations through agents from Latin America, from other Baltic countries. Yes, there were some Ukrainians also involved, but it doesn't matter the citizenship of the agents. That's about the agency and it's about the institution. So in Russia, this is the military chain of command. We are dealing with the military unit who is responsible for these operations, and it's for us to decide where is the red line where they have to cross. So for my country, this is the casualties and this is the huge damage to infrastructure, and criteria about the intent. And if we have the attribution, this is an act of aggression, and we shouldn't go into those working groups and, you know, concept discussions, workshops or something to find out where is this hypothetical limit. Here the limit is when you think, when you agree that you are under attack and you go and defend yourself. So I think this — and for hybrid, they are the Russians, they're trying to get us closer to this limit but not enough, and to split us on the assessment. So there would be someone that would say, no, no, no, let's de-escalate; the others would say, no, this is the line where we have to self-defend.

Thank you, Minister Budris, Minister Fältin. Thank you for reminding us we're under hybrid attack, but we have a hybrid response. We do diplomacy and politics as well as hard power. So what a terrific discussion to get us kicked off. Thank you both very much.

Thank you to our distinguished speakers for those valuable insights and for setting the tone for conversations to come. We're now going to get the stage ready. Thank you all for joining us for the opening session, and now we will actually continue straight away to the next panel. So the next discussion will turn to the question of Europe's technological sovereignty. We are excited to have Justin Hotard, president and CEO of Nokia Corporation, and Rafał Morawski, CEO of ICEYE, on stage to moderate the discussion. Please welcome Helsinki Bureau Chief Gizelle from Bloomberg News. The floor is yours.

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. It's an honor to be here with you today and moderate this first panel discussion. And Justin and Rafa, a warm welcome to both of you.

Look, we've just heard presidents and prime and foreign ministers talk about the serious security situation and hybrid attacks and what's ahead, how to prepare. So Justin, you were in the audience. What stood out to you?

He also mentioned that the private sector can speed up things also when strengthening military forces.

Yeah. And before we talk about sovereignty and your cooperation more, I'd still like to understand a little bit about the discussions you are having. You both spend a lot of time outside Finland — Justin in the United States and Rafa in Poland. And Rafa, Finland and Poland are both frontline states. What are business leaders in Poland talking about when it comes to security?

Look, I think it's very similar to what's happening over here. There is a lot of discussions around what has to change versus how we used to operate in the past. The military and the business were two different worlds. They obviously were forced to collaborate to a certain level, but that collaboration was always shielded with a wall, and the flow of information was not a fast flow. Everybody realizes, based on what's happening in Ukraine, that you can't do that anymore. You have to work hand in hand between the private sector, the industry, and the military. One has to learn from the other. The requirements, the feedback — those have to flow very quickly. So I think that's definitely in the core of the discussion. There's also the very much realization that in order to achieve a certain level of resilience within those nations, you have to achieve technological sovereignty, and that technological sovereignty is achieved through the development of certain capabilities — critical core capabilities, whether in networks or intelligence — by the companies present one way or the other within the territory. And I think those companies and the business leaders very often feel not only the need from the business perspective but also a patriotic call to develop certain capabilities that didn't exist within the country so that they can ensure that those will be provided in the future.

Okay. And Justin, when you talk to your peers in the US, what geopolitical risks are they most concerned about?

Yeah. So rather than talking so much about the risks and the doomsday scenarios, you'd say that we need to be concerned about, in Europe, about not losing the whole game.

So technological sovereignty — I'd like to hear, Rafa, how you would also define it, because we can't do in Europe everything on our own. So where does Europe need to be sovereign and where can it rely on others? If you could give a couple of examples.

I'm glad that you asked for a couple of examples, because the entire list is pretty complex and I would not dare to try to define it all over here. Look, maybe two comments. One, 100% agree with Justin on the fact that the US and Europe ultimately are so much more aligned than many other of the geopolitical players that it is to the benefit of both to have a competitive, properly structured competitive market in which the capabilities that we both need are being developed at pace and at cost and are provided to respective governments in a way that is making this available. And I think the threat of losing the technological race is actually much more severe than what we usually give it credit for. And we have to realize that the current conflicts show us that you cannot be behind in terms of technological development by years anymore. I mean, if you are a few years behind your adversary in what's the newest and the most advanced, you are losing straight out, right? So you don't have the time to wait. You really have to be at the cutting edge of all of those critical technologies. Now, on the other hand, I do want to throw out a second comment over there, because I think there's still a tendency to believe that Europe does not have a capability to possess large amounts of complex technologies. I understand where this comment is coming from. Historically, maybe we have not been the best at accumulating complex capabilities on the industrial scale in Europe, but I don't fundamentally believe there is any reason why we couldn't possess significantly more, why we couldn't stand a chance to compete with companies from the US on a more frequent basis in the majority of the fields. Chips are definitely one. Battery production is definitely one. Now, look, which ones I believe would have to be fully independent — this is hard to say, right? I think we should have — there's obviously part of the healthcare ecosystem where that dependency is clearly something where we have to have enough capability internally that we can deal with challenges like COVID or similar. But I think this is where we are quite fine on a technological side. You know, our view is obviously that space technology is one of the bits that we have sort of stayed behind and we have to catch up. The dependency was quite big, and this is the place where we have to develop more. When you go down in the supply chain in space technology, the integrated circuits are actually probably next, and this is where Nokia has been doing really a lot of work. But we do see that the integrated circuits in Europe — the joint ventures that we have put together have not always been successful. The dependency that the US has on Taiwan is also true. But that doesn't mean that if they are solving this, we should not be trying to solve one for ourselves. So this is probably the one that I would focus on as the next big one outside of the space, which is obviously the one close to my heart.

Justin, do you want to add something? Where can we rely on others and where not?

Definitely. Well, let's take your cooperation as an example. ICEYE and Nokia announced yesterday that you're now working together to build secure European communications in space. Tell us a little bit more about what you are doing. Who wants to go first?

You want to go first? Sure. Sure. Not too technical, not for me, please. Yeah. So look, I mean, I think we have both observed that tendency, and we have heard the ask very much from the customers that one of the challenges that they are facing today is communication on the battlefield, within their borders and outside of their borders. And they have tried to rely in the past on services provided by others, but this has proven to be, let's call it, challenging. I think, you know, that has very quickly created a need both within countries that are actually involved in an active conflict and those ones that aren't, to own sovereign constellations or sovereign space-based networks that would provide communications capability within the country and slightly outside of the borders. Right? So we are really talking about nation states saying, look, I would like to have an independent network of satellites providing a communication capability that I can internally use both for defense and intelligence but also for civil protection and emergency situations. So it's a dual-use capability.

And before you go on, in what kind of situations could you give us an example? In a situation like...

I mean, look, I will give you an example that actually was a very live example we have experienced. You may know that we are providing today — of course, the satellites that we are building today are dual-use to begin with. So we provide capabilities for defense, intelligence, but we also deal with natural catastrophes. And we have a situation in one of the countries that is actually talking to us about this today where large flooding has taken place, and that flooding has engulfed a village. Now, we provided imagery about what's happening over there. So they were certain that the water most probably hasn't flooded everything, but it has flooded sufficiently a lot that no communication was available to that village whatsoever. There was just no 4G networks, there was no any other communication available, and the roads were closed. And that stayed true for about 72 hours. And they realized that during those 72 hours there was no way and shape or form in which they were able to reach the people in that village and actually verify: are they all dead or are they still alive and waiting for help? Should they send helicopters? I mean, what is it that the response should really look like, right? And this just gives you a sense of, you know, we don't really think about how vulnerable our everyday infrastructure is until that infrastructure is gone. Right? I always think about this a little bit as if you were walking on a frozen sea. You know, it always feels so stable until the moment the ice cracks and your life is in danger. This is actually exactly what happens when a wildfire takes place, when an earthquake takes place — the infrastructure is gone from one moment to another, and you actually realize that the thing that you have become accustomed so much to depend on on an everyday basis isn't there anymore. And that's when you have to have a system that provides you this resilience, which is an alternative system which is going to work independent of what is happening on the ground. And that's exactly what a space-based communication provides. This has been solved in the past in various ways. We have had large geostationary satellites that have been solving such systems, but they haven't provided the right bandwidth and latency and independence that those countries are looking for. And so when we both looked at this program, we said, look, this is an urgent need, in some cases an extremely urgent need. We both have pieces of the solution that we can bring to the table. If we can bring them together quickly, then we are able to probably solve for this at the speed that's acceptable for some of those customers.

Nokia — what's in it for Nokia?

Is there also a dependency you are solving with this move? You're building the European communications in space, but is there a dependency at the moment?

Yeah. Before we take a couple of questions from the audience, still one question of what sovereignty means to you. Rafa, ICEYE has sent many of its satellites to space on board SpaceX, and last month you announced that you're now exploring Europe's Ariane 6 as well. That is Europe's latest launch system developed by the European Space Agency. So how important is it for ICEYE to have, or for Europe to have, more than one route to space?

I mean, the short answer is very important. I think it's one of those critical dependencies in a supply chain that you realize how important it is once you face a situation in which there may be a shortage of, say, availability, or it may not become available to you at all. Now, the launch in itself becomes critical once you realize how critical are the elements of the infrastructure that you actually have to put in space. Once you realize that space-based intelligence and reconnaissance is of critical importance so that you can both monitor the flat but also know what's happening around your border, and space-based communication is critical. And in order to maintain both of those services in space, and you have to replenish them on a regular basis, you need an ability to get there, and you need an ability to get there at a frequency that's sufficient to sustain those networks. The truth is that today Europe doesn't have such a solution. There is a whole variety of efforts that are going on, a European launcher challenge. Some of them have been more successful than others. Look, our job here as a company that has extremely strong European roots is to work with the industry locally to try to figure out ways in order to increase the capacity that's available. And that's what we are trying to do with Ariane. That's what we are going to do with other players. Because I think that this is a bit of a collaboration, European collaboration call. We just have to start working with each other to make sure that although in certain situations this may not be perfect, the de-risking factor is sufficiently important to both. So that we really have to start looking at, okay, if we can transfer some of this launch capability or launch requirements from the US launchers, then will our industry be able to pick up sufficiently so that it can offer a viable alternative? And I think in the sovereignty aspect, a little bit as we were talking about this, it's really not about transferring 100% load from one place to the other. It's not in order to develop a completely isolated ecosystem that would be so good or so big that you wouldn't ever use anything outside of your borders. I think it's really about being a partner that's existing on equal footing and having an ability to pick and choose and not being sort of forced into a single solution which has certain commercial and political risk that perhaps are unacceptable to things with a higher level of importance.

Okay. And Justin, Nokia is working increasingly closely with Nvidia. So has perhaps that relationship changed the way you think about sovereignty and supply chains? Is it maybe about securing access rather than producing everything by yourself or ourselves?

Okay, good. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, there is room for one or two questions. We heard the instructions. If you can just wait until we bring the microphone to you, and then you can present yourselves and ask the question. Who would like to go first?

There are so many intimidating people over there. If you could please bring a mic. Thank you so much.

Thank you. Kim Doer, I'm a CNN analyst and I'm with the GW project for media and national security. I have heard a lot on Capitol Hill about the fight for bandwidth space and that China has tried to move into some of the space that you need to operate in. So what is the state of play with that, and how much does that figure into your day-to-day planning?

You want to take that first? Thank you.

So, you know, I think this, at least from the perspective that we are operating in, it's still a little bit early days on how this whole, let's say, fight is going to play out. But we do have to realize that bandwidth, electromagnetic bandwidth, is actually one of those things which is very strictly limited. As much as we would like to create more of it, there just simply isn't. And as you're trying to move out higher and higher in frequencies, it's getting significantly and significantly harder. And we can already see how this is playing out within commercial communication networks between different players. And I do think that, you know, sooner or later, the crazy thing, this has not really been the case five, ten years ago. Nobody was really so concerned about space-based use of the bandwidth. But now we are realizing, and China is definitely realizing, that some of the international organizations that we're in meant to govern such complex problems like the International Telecommunication Union, ITU, they are now becoming a place where things like this are decided on a global scale, and ITU is deciding things on a global scale. Although every country is managing its own communication networks, you know, I can tell you that our satellites, once they receive an ITU clearance for imaging with synthetic aperture radar, they do it globally. So we have this global resource which is clearly finite, and we are starting to have enough assets in space that they start really overlapping with one another, and not many people have yet realized that that will indeed be a place that's contentious. But what I'm saying is it's actually still pretty early days. I don't think anybody has yet figured out how this will get played out. But I hope that Europe will actually also catch up on this one.

Good. Thank you for the question. It was a bit hard to get questions, so maybe I just conclude with one of my own. The president spoke about trust, and you're building partnerships all around the world, and ISAI is growing. How's trust in the business world nowadays?

Yeah, look, I think it's hard to comment on overall trust globally, but I can say that it's fundamental in a business relationship to build it on top of trust. I think in principle, if you cannot align with the other party on a trust level, this relationship is going to fail sooner or later. And now trust is really built or starts from common values, common principles, and common mission. And our mission over here is to solve the problem of sovereign communication for those customers, starting from the European customers. Right. We see that need, and we really want to make sure that we have an answer for that as quickly as possible. And so that mission alignment, deep, really emotional, almost mission alignment, helps us build trust on top of this, which I think I can at least speak for us. We have a...

Thank you, Justin, Rafal, and Giri, for those insightful contributions. Having explored these broader questions surrounding Europe's technological sovereignty, including AI, infrastructure, and partnerships, we now turn to a field where technological developments are certainly having a profound impact on security and defense. The next panel will be about drones and military innovation, and the discussion is titled 'Drone with the Wind.' The panel will be moderated by VR Bisalo, and VR is a strategic advisor from Digital Defense Ecosystem. So, without further ado, please welcome to the stage VR.

Excellent. Thank you, and your excellencies, distinguished guests. We're going to have a wonderful panel today. We have our panelists here: Ena TK, the CEO of Firepoint, and Mr. Peter Sarin from Nestie. The title of the panel, of course, is 'Drone with the Wind: Military Innovation in the Age of a Major War.' And innovation certainly is a super important theme. We're going to have three sub-themes in this discussion. We will look at innovation as a continuous wartime process. Second, we're going to look at the industrial economics of major war, and then end with having a short discussion on who controls the military stack in the end. But we're not going to have any more of my talk. I'm going to turn the microphone over to first Ena and ask that when we talk about technological superiority, is it still about having the best system, or is it really about being able to change as quickly and efficiently as possible to counter the adversary's capabilities?

Thank you. There is definitely a new reshaping of what happened in Ukraine and how the worldwide defense looks like. We have a joke that Ukraine continuously lives on TRL 7, and for those who don't know, TRL is a technology readiness level. TRL 9 is considered something after which you can create a serial production. So Ukraine actually never leaves TRL 7, not because we are not able to do the TRL 9, but because it's a constant change that we need to follow. And of course, it requires specific systems of how your business processes are aligned to what's happening in the battlefield, and also there should be a great addition from governmental effort to allow this sustainability to happen. For example, when the majority of the engineers will self-manage themselves into having a very agile and adaptable system to the battlefield, but will the procurement be able to follow the same agility? If your contract is for one year, how many times can you change the antennas or anything else within this specific contract, and how much bureaucracy will it take, and how much of a delay this bureaucracy will bring to the process? So it's always a three-sided process between engineers, between military, and between the government for this agility to be able to work at the proper speed.

Absolutely. That requires leadership as well.

Yes.

Yeah. And has Ukraine been able to adapt to these types of requirements, in your mind, very efficiently?

Absolutely. There is always room where you can grow. But if not for the freedom that the Ukrainian government allows Ukrainian engineers and Ukrainian manufacturers to have, we would have already all been dead, because the possibility to protect yourself with technology allows you to have a very big scope of trust, specifically when it comes to military units and to the governmental procurement system. The more responsibility lies on the shoulders of the manufacturer and of the engineer, but also with this responsibility we have more freedom and we have better flexibility to adapt to the processes that we have. When we compare ourselves to more established Western primes, their responsibility mostly ends at the day where the drones leave the factory. Our responsibility ends after all of the cycle with launch and then after-action review and then some changes. And if I get a worrying signal that something does not work the way it's supposed to work, I receive it in a matter of a messaging signal at 3 in the night, and by morning I can already come up with a specific solution.

Right, that is agile indeed. So, Peter, looking at this from a European perspective and recognizing the need for agility, how much do you think in Europe can we reproduce of this process, since we are not facing the same kind of existential threats?

Yeah, I think, I mean, first of all, I have to say that I think Arena makes my life easy here because those are basically the beliefs and the thesis that we have. And I mean, I don't talk with the experience that you have from Ukraine. We obviously try to learn. But we do look at the world through the sort of lens of having built some of these technologies for the past, say, 10-plus years for the real world. And obviously, sort of for civil, mostly for civilian use cases, but it's sort of equally difficult there in the sense that there's no, like, when we talk about unmanned systems and drones and intelligence for them, there is no such thing as general-purpose intelligence that would be able to tackle every single environment, and especially not if the environments are changing. So, you know, I think the sort of what the way you're positioning it, when I was looking at the defense world a couple of years back through the lens of having done that in civilian industries, what was kind of obvious that it has to be done in a different way. These long procurement programs and cycles will not solve the way that the problem needs to solve. And as I alluded to, this hasn't really worked in civilian context as well. We were promised full self-driving more than 10 years ago. We still don't have it on the roads. Self-driving, obviously, a little bit different, but autonomy is autonomy, and it's difficult. And as long as we live in a world that changes, then there's no AI that will cover every single city or road or environment. And then if you combine that with the battlefield where the adversary's main task is to change the battlefield so that nothing works, then it becomes even more difficult. And that's sort of the points that you make are exactly the points that we also believe are critical. And then now to the question, I think the how long will it take, I don't know. I guess it took kind of three years or so of like wartime years to build the capability that exists today. The question is how many peacetime years will it take for the rest of Europe to build the same capability? And I truly, as I now indicated, I truly believe it takes a different perspective to build defense capability. And the sort of the way that we've been used to building defense capability isn't really supporting what software and AI requires us to do.

Excellent. Well,

Can I also add, there's one thought that Ukrainian survival success, if we can call it so, is built on half institutions and half desperation. And when we are talking about what we can learn from Ukraine, copy the institution part in the way that there would be no desperation required. This is something that probably I can advise after living for almost four years in full-scale invasion.

That is an interesting observation, and if you may, I would categorize it as such that we talk about technology in regards to Ukraine, which is absolutely correct, but you're actually articulating a procedural and institutional change. It is very important what happened in the year of 2023 in Ukraine. Again, it took so much time from the beginning of a full-scale invasion till the actual implementation, but there had been a bill approved by the Ukrainian government that basically opened the market, if we can call it so. So the Ministry of Defense was desperately calling for everybody who had even the basic engineering skills to join the fight, and they made the defense industry from something shady, lobby, corrupted, a very understandable, let's say, business incubator sort of thing. So for whoever was afraid to have contracts with the government, the roadmap was so clear and so easy to understand. It was published on the website. So if you're an entrepreneur with some sort of experience, you can follow this roadmap and arrive to a successful point. Then the possibility to have a bigger margin that will include the risk, the margin uplifted from 3% to 25%, which defense manufacturers can earn in Ukraine, which of course with 3% you cannot actually make effective weapons because you have to invest in R&D, you have to protect yourself from military risks. And there were a few, let's say, cutting the red tape on this bill which made it very easy to codify your weapon, to do all the testing, and to make it available for the Ukrainian army. This does not mean, and this made a lot of discussions around this whether or not we are abandoning safety, whether or not we are abusing some rules that are designed for normal military action. But in fact, nobody from the manufacturers want to make unsafe weapons because we work with them ourselves. And the reality is that almost every manufacturer is present on the launch directly himself on the battlefield. So he works with his product himself. Nobody wants to make something that is unsafe. What we really cut off is some part of climatics. For example, we do not really think in categories, or should we fit the requirement this missile will be stored for 12.5 years. We don't care in the moment. Half a year is completely okay for our purposes. We will come back and review then later these rules. But right now, under this existential, this bill allows us to have more freedom even on such smaller cases, which gives us a possibility to make cheaper weapons, more scalable weapons, and also more agile.

Yeah, absolutely. That's a very interesting point. Peter, Vladimir Putin in 2017 said that whoever is going to control artificial intelligence will control the world, and thus he articulates very, very concretely the need for us to be in that game as well. And you guys are in that game from a European military AI point of view. What is the biggest constraint for us as we develop our capabilities? Is it the algorithms? Is it the technology? Or is it the organizational capability to absorb new ways of doing and thinking?

Yeah, I think it's a combination of all of these. And I mean, as I alluded to earlier, it takes a different approach to build capability that actually serves the battlefield compared to civilian use cases. And I think we can even generalize that because the reality is that AI is basically probabilistic by definition. It doesn't work by definition. And the only way that you will make it work is to ensure that you're feeding it the data that covers the specific edge cases and corner cases that you need to solve. And hence, it's actually extremely easy for an adversary to make or break any AI that you'd like to use on the battlefield. And I think there's tremendous opportunity for AI, but at the same time, I think when I looked at defense a couple of years back, I was surprised by how little AI is actually used on the battlefield at the time. And then it becomes obvious given how difficult it is and how it requires you to take a different approach. And hence, it's not just one algorithm or one of these dimensions that you highlighted, but it really requires you to sort of change the approach with which you develop capability or with which you develop solutions that work today. And what worked yesterday will probably not work tomorrow. And that could be anything from masking an object to bombing the battlefield so that the map changes for you, moving from one sensor to another, and then an existing AI model just simply doesn't work anymore. And there is no such thing as general-purpose intelligence that would serve the world in every single circumstance. And hence, sort of then eventually what you also highlighted as one of the dimensions, this sort of approach with which you build is different. It's really just running a rapid and agile development cycle towards a battlefield that is constantly changing. And if you look at how that's being solved in civilian use cases, it basically implies that you have modular systems that can be adapted. They're usually open. Then it usually implies that you have your own R&D capability that is directly sort of getting requirements and solving them as they come. And in this context, you need to be able to solve them not in years or months, but in days. And then ultimately, in an AI context, it's highly costly to train new models. And this is how self-driving is built today also. I mean, you run basically simulation engines or worlds that are able to create synthetic data combined with real-world data, and through a flywheel constantly train, constantly generate new training data that allows you to tackle the edge and corner cases that are happening on the battlefield. And if you think about this combination, the way I looked a couple of years back at the defense industry, we were trying to solve the problem in a different way. And you know, I would even call then that that's kind of peacetime technology, whereas sort of the way that, you know, I believe you should build this sovereign European capability just takes a different approach to it.

Yeah. Well, this actually is a perfect segue to our second theme, which is the industrial economics of a major war. And Peter, you mentioned that you were looking at what's going on in defense from using your civilian experiences and private sector experiences. This tends to beg the question that is, do we see new actors within the security domain? Do we have new roles for private organizations who are more up to speed on what technology can actually do in contrast to the public officials who are procuring them and in the end using them as well?

Is it a question for me?

Well, why not? I was building on Peter's comment, but we'll get to you, I guess.

Yeah. I mean, I'd be glad to hand over because I actually think that Ukraine is a great example of how industry and industry experience is innovating in defense today. But I mean, yes, I think, you know, that's what we see happening at the moment. So there's, you know, tremendous innovation happening in defense today. I, you know, one of the key reasons why I got engaged was that unfortunately still I think a lot of the technology that is being built is not necessarily following all the sort of requirements of wartime technology, but is more sort of serving peacetime needs. And I think that's sort of a concern that everyone should have. I mean, we're increasing the defense budgets, and we ultimately have all a shared concern to build Europe's security. And hence, ideally, this technology would be built in such a way that it actually serves the real requirements that we can observe now, for instance, in Ukraine. And hence, you know, obviously a lot of the skill set that is coming into the defense segment comes from other industries.

Yeah. So, how do you see the role of private sector companies vis-à-vis the public one, given that Firepoint has grown exponentially, I guess, and is a great example of wartime industrial scaling? How do you see your role in contrast to the public?

If you allow me, I will start with bragging.

We're all here for that.