Were The Partying Adventures of Finland’s Prime Minister Made Public by Putin’s FSB In Retaliation For NATO Application?
[guest post by Dana]
About a week ago, Finland’s young prime minister, Sanna Marin found herself caught up in a media firestorm after video of her dancing and partying was leaked:
Finland’s prime minister says she did not take any drugs during a “wild” party in a private home, adding she did nothing wrong when letting her hair down and partying with friends.
A video posted on social media shows six people dancing and mimicking a song in front of a camera, including Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin.
Later in the video, Marin, 36, is on her knees on what seems to be the dance floor with her arms behind her head dancing while mimicking a song.
“I’m disappointed that it has become public. I spent the evening with friends. Partied, pretty wild, yes. Danced and sang,” she was quoted Thursday as saying by Finnish broadcaster YLE.
There was also an inappropriate photograph of two guests attending a party at the prime minister’s residence in July that was leaked as well. Marin apologized for the inappropriate photo.
A flurry of reports followed the leaked video of Marin dancing at the party held in a private residence. Hillary Clinton tweeted that Sanna Marin should just keep dancing:
As Ann Richards said, "Ginger Rogers did everything that Fred Astaire did. She just did it backwards and in high heels."
Here's me in Cartagena while I was there for a meeting as Secretary of State.
Keep dancing, @marinsanna. pic.twitter.com/btAtUFOcNV
— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) August 28, 2022
AOC jumped on the bandwagon of support and re-tweeted a clip of her dancing at her office:
Elected officials who dance? We're here for it, @marinsanna 😉 pic.twitter.com/rZfjOivzeT
— Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@RepAOC) August 30, 2022
The New York Times discussed whether Sanna Marin, age 36, was being held to a different standard than older, male leaders.
And sensing an opening, the BBC reported that opposition party leader party leader Riikka Purra demanded that Marin take a drug test after the video was leaked. Marin was happy to comply. Her test came back negative.
Anyway, you can find reports discussing every aspect of Marin’s partying that focus on what is acceptable and unacceptable behavior for politicians and whether women who lead governments are judged more harshly than their male counterparts. You can also find lots of speculation about whether Sanna Marin, wife and mother, is still married, given that she partied solo. But I’m not really interested in any of that. What I did find myself wondering about was who would release the video. Given her very public position, it’s reasonable to assume that those in attendance were people with whom she was friends, or had been vouched for by trusted friends or family, and had been cleared by her security detail. With that, I happen to be checking out Bill Browder’s Twitter feed, and he linked to Orhan Dragas, founder and director of the International Security Institute, who believes that it was Putin’s FSB that leaked the video by hacking the phones of attendees. Thus, he believes it is vital that Marin continue to push back at her critics.
Dragas sets the stage for us:
In May, the Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, threatened Finland and said that Russia would respond if the neighbour joined NATO and that their response would be a “surprise”. Before that, she threatened with “serious military consequences”, saying that Finland “knows what its entry into NATO will lead to”.
And? Finland is joining NATO, and Russia retaliated, as it previously announced, with a surprise. Leaked private footage from the Finnish Prime Minister’s party is the Kremlin’s counter-strike on Helsinki; it is the response of one of the world’s largest military and intelligence powers (in its own opinion) that has been announced for months.
The heir of the KGB’s great murderous machine, Putin’s FSB, today deals with hacking the private phones of Sanna Marin’s friends with whom she has fun in her free time and at her own expense.
Dragas points out that Putin’s government is currently unable to do too much damage in retaliation for Finland’s application to join NATO. After all, Russia is busy trying to wipe out a people and thus stretched a bit thin at the moment:
The attempt to expose Sanna Marin having fun is the maximum damage the announced Russian counterattack can cause to Finland. That is the extent of the ability of today’s Russian military and intelligence complex to influence foreign governments, their decisions and their fate.
Sad!
The author goes on to explain why he believes Putin’s FSB would expose Finland’s prime minister in this way:
What did Russia want with this? Russia wanted to discredit the leader of a crucial EU and NATO member to the extent of destabilising its government and causing its downfall… It was necessary to “hit” Finland because while the invasion of Ukraine continues, it is still a living symbol of resistance to Russia, a historical shame for its expansionist goals.
There is also the issue of Marin being a young woman in power, which, unsurprisingly, the Kremlin has problems with:
Their (Sanna Marin and Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas ) leadership, and especially their charisma, is intolerable for Russian ethical and aesthetical standards, with models like half-naked Putin riding a bear and for the older generation, Brezhnev kissing Erich Honecker on the mouth. That’s why their “revenge” against Sanna Marin was personal, and that’s why it failed.
If one didn’t have a basic awareness of Putin’s insatiable compulsion to punish – and even silence – those who defy him, this would read like some preposterous piece of fiction by a writer with an overactive imagination. But, as Bill Browder very pointedly informed us: with Putin, these sorts of things aren’t preposterous in the least:
“In his mind, he hasn’t succeeded until his opponent has failed, and he can’t be happy until his opponent is miserable.”
–Dana
Hello.
While I don’t have a problem with Sanna Marin partying in private, she might want to become a bit more aware of bigger things concerning the state.
Dana (1225fc) — 8/30/2022 @ 7:14 pmi think putin is much too busy wrecking our economy, hoarding baby formula and spreading covid misinformation to bother with this
best to wait until 51 intelligence officials sign on to it, like they did with hunter’s laptop
JF (16a2d8) — 8/30/2022 @ 7:47 pmi think putin is using voodoo karate lasers to make biden say stupid things
JF (16a2d8) — 8/30/2022 @ 7:51 pmIf the head of Finland’s government has enough spare time to be a Woo Girl at da club, the country’s issues are clearly light enough that it may not actually need a prime minister to take care of them, and should probably abolish the office altogether.
Factory Working Orphan (2775f0) — 8/30/2022 @ 8:07 pmShe should have gone golfing instead.
Davethulhu (aac330) — 8/30/2022 @ 8:10 pmIt’s called kompromat. The KGB practice of dirtying up people. To blackmail them or just to hurt them.
It does not need to be real. It can be just a word in a receptive ear that makes its way to legitimate outlets.
The urinating demimondes in a Moscow hotel did not just spring out of the ground. And Putin could not lose. It contributed to 2016 election disorder even when discredited. And when Putin also said that it was not true, he made a friend in Trump. For the fifteen minutes or so that Trump’s gratitude lasts, anyway.
nk (069b1c) — 8/30/2022 @ 8:27 pmIf one believes this, then surely Trump would be included too, given his many, many hours spent on the golf course.
Dana (1225fc) — 8/30/2022 @ 8:36 pmPutin leaves no Stones unturned?!?!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3Y_hHdLAKY&t=47s
… and Jagger smiled.
_____
OFGS:
As Ann Richards said, “Ginger Rogers did everything that Fred Astaire did. She just did it backwards and in high heels.” Here’s me in Cartagena while I was there for a meeting as Secretary of State.
Not quite, Miss Jello Mold of 1969: Fred led; Ginger followed.
And BTW, you incredibly ancient, petrified cowpie: Ginger Rogers was a Republican.
But then, here’s the real YOU in 1969, when rock really rolled– but your Wellsley butt didn’t– and it was still wider athan the stripes on those slacks:
https://www.life.com/people/life-with-hillary-portraits-of-a-wellesley-grad-1969/
DCSCA (74c24c) — 8/30/2022 @ 8:38 pmIf one believes this, then surely Trump would be included too, given his many, many hours spent on the golf course.
Dana (1225fc) — 8/30/2022 @ 8:36 pm
Maybe that’s why Bush and Obama were such garbage Presidents, too. And I’ll fully stand by what I said about Finland’s Head Woo Girl.
Factory Working Orphan (2775f0) — 8/30/2022 @ 8:42 pmIt’s the kind of skulduggery Putin would engage in.
Paul Montagu (062b7e) — 8/30/2022 @ 8:43 pmFinland has a mid-30s female prime minister who does her job and has a non-scandalous social life.
Incidentally, golf is almost–but not quite–a bigger waste of time and money than skiing/snowboarding.
Factory Working Orphan (2775f0) — 8/30/2022 @ 8:48 pmhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1F0lBnsnkE
Hillary Rodham Clinton dances like:
[ ] Jerry the Mouse
[ ] Oliver Hardy
[ ] Phil Silvers
[ ]Groucho Marx
Choose.
DCSCA (74c24c) — 8/30/2022 @ 8:54 pmIf the worst the FSB could find on the Prime Minister of Finland was that she danced at a private houseparty, she is squeaky clean. And I say “you go girl!” to her.
Nic (896fdf) — 8/30/2022 @ 8:55 pmIf one didn’t have a basic awareness of Putin’s insatiable compulsion to punish…
Hmmm. Putin’s mistress is certain punishing somebody. Been a bad boy, Vlad?
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/video/vladimirputin/video-2643379/Video-Putins-mistress-dances-night-away-December-wedding-Moscow.html?page=
DCSCA (74c24c) — 8/30/2022 @ 9:13 pmYou want punishment? Be strapped to a chair on Hillary Clinton’s lap and forced to watch this for a week:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KdvHwtRdg_I
DCSCA (74c24c) — 8/30/2022 @ 9:16 pmEh… if you’re looking for some unflattering attribute/activity of an elected official, and the worst thing you could find is…what…that you attended a party?
Man, I don’t know what her policies are like, but she must be a rock solid politician for the Fins.
We would be so lucky if our politicians was like that.
whembly (b770f8) — 8/31/2022 @ 6:38 am@7
Heck… I WANTED Obama/Trump to spend as much time on the golf course as possible.
Less possible hours to “F up” the country.
whembly (b770f8) — 8/31/2022 @ 6:41 amWell, Putin’s goal was to show how stupid we can be in the west. Mission accomplished.
Nonetheless, he still is a murdering dictator whose army is underperforming. The problem with being a Bond supervillain is that you can never find decent help.
Appalled (03f53c) — 8/31/2022 @ 7:33 amIf Hillary could have danced like that in 2016, she’d be president today.
Kevin M (eeb9e9) — 8/31/2022 @ 8:15 amNext up, Boris Johnson.
Kevin M (eeb9e9) — 8/31/2022 @ 8:18 amWait, she sang AND danced…..and kept her clothes on. Scandalous indeed. Probably much better than tweeting nonsense and hatching plans to steal elections….like old men past their dancing prime. Work hard….play hard. Mind your own business.
AJ_Liberty (ec7f74) — 8/31/2022 @ 8:22 amI don’t see anything in Mr. Dragas’ column suggesting he has any forensic proof the FSB did it. I have no love for Russia whatsoever, my ancestors having fled over a century ago, but the “Russians behind every rock and tree” mindset is just socially acceptable paranoia. This analyst just assumes everybody at the party was a reliable friend who wouldn’t willingly/knowingly compromise her. That’s…incredibly fortunate, if true. I guess the sensational tell-all memoirs routinely written by ex-White House staff are just forgeries, because politicians are habitually surrounded by people without agendas.
“Because we want it to be true” was the only evidence tying Hunter Biden’s laptop to Russia, and the Steele dossier was powered by the same thing. I don’t have to believe Putin is at all a good guy to believe he’s turned into an all-purpose Emmanuel Goldstein for people who find that a useful tool.
Eliot (0a09b8) — 8/31/2022 @ 8:27 amGirls just want to have fun.
Seriously if this the best the FSB can do, they are seriously out of practice.
Rip Murdock (fa6da7) — 8/31/2022 @ 8:56 am@8
mark (b7d9b4) — 8/31/2022 @ 10:37 amDuring the time that Ginger Rodgers was a Republican, Hillary was a Goldwater girl and Donald Trump a Democrat. Things change.
Maybe Putin was trying to portray Ms. Marin as a female version of the former Toronto mayor, but there is truly only one Rob Ford.
Paul Montagu (062b7e) — 8/31/2022 @ 11:12 amTwelve days ago, pro-Putin influencer and daughter of Alexander Dugin was murdered in spectacular fashion by car bomb, and now Putin is going back to more conventional means.
I wonder what the death-by-defenestration rate is in Russia compared to other countries. Russian windows sound very dangerous.
Paul Montagu (062b7e) — 9/1/2022 @ 8:29 amRussia is a magical place. Stare out an open window and soon you might be up close and personal with the infinite.
Appalled (03f53c) — 9/1/2022 @ 8:44 amPutin denied Gorbachev a state funeral, which the diminutive dictator won’t attend anyway because he’s a busy man with a busy schedule.
Meantime, Stalin has 70% approval among Russians.
Paul Montagu (062b7e) — 9/1/2022 @ 9:19 am