Professor Katri Pynnöniemi presented her celebratory lecture in the main building of the University of Helsinki on 3 December 2025. In her lecture, she talked about researching Russian security policy amidst the war against Ukraine. Please, follow the link to read the lecture in Finnish.
Dear professorial colleagues, distinguished guests
I thank you for the honour of presenting my ceremonial lecture in this prestigious setting. Thanks also to all those who participated in the arrangements for this celebration – on behalf of all of us professors.
Ending the war in Ukraine – respecting the principle of sovereignty or on the terms of a policy of interest?
Earlier this year, this hall hosted a discussion between the President of the Republic Alexander Stubb and the President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky on ending the war in Ukraine. Both presidents stressed in their speeches that the security of Ukraine is a central part of European security. The outcome of the war will determine the kind of world we live in.
Later that day, President Zelensky spoke with US President Donald Trump and confirmed that Ukraine is ready to agree to an immediate ceasefire with Russia. As we now know, the talks did not lead to an agreement, and instead, Russia has stepped up attacks on civilian targets in Ukraine. Regardless of the losses, Russia has also been slowly capturing more territory from Ukraine.
According to most experts, Ukraine’s defenses are not about to collapse immediately, although the situation is difficult.
Russia’s message to the world, and especially to President Trump, has been the opposite. According to Russia, Ukraine’s defeat is inevitable.
However, it is clear that Russia does not fully believe this explanation either. Therefore, the Kremlin has drawn up a plan to take through diplomacy what it has not achieved through military force.
In exchange for Ukraine, Russia is offering a non-aggression pact that divides Europe into spheres of influence. Under the guise of a deal, American companies would receive lucrative contracts and access to Russia's energy resources, strengthening Russia's position in the new world, at the expense of international law and multilateral institutions.
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All of us in this room understand without saying what this would mean for Europe, especially for Russia’s neighbors.
President Mauno Koivisto summarized this dilemma in his book published in 2001 as follows: “You can say about Russia: the aspiration for greatness has given birth to Russia. But greatness can also be without being vast, without expanding, without subjugating others.”
President Koivisto’s formulation is timeless and logical.
It has been the basis on which European policy towards Russia has been conducted since the early 1990s. Russia has been offered the opportunity to renew itself – to modernize society and the economy, and to build greatness on that foundation. In Russia, too, people began to associate the vitality of the state with the growth of the economy and well-being in the course of the 21st century.
The problem was and is that this, in our opinion, reasonable and desirable future outlook, did not correspond to the image of the essence of a great power, on the basis of which the Russian state leadership made and continues to make decisions.
As Swedish scholar on Russia Gudrun Persson states in her latest book on Russian military strategy, “Russia acts from its own starting points,” and it would be misleading to explain Russian decision-making as a mere reaction to Western actions. I will examine this dilemma in more detail below.
The Formula of Russian Great Power Thinking
Let’s go back in time for a moment. In 2004, I was sitting in a Moscow library, going through a newspaper published by the Russian Ministry of Transport for my doctoral dissertation.
I picked up an interview with Army General Mahmut Gareeyev from the library in August 1999, and I have kept it ever since. At the time of the interview and for a long time afterward, Gareeyev was the president of the Russian Academy of Military Sciences and was one of the most well-known and respected Russian military scientists.
In the long interview, he reviews the international situation of the late 1990s and directs his criticism particularly at the West. At the same time, he describes the starting points of Russia's strategy.
Great power status means the ability to bind neighboring countries into the Russian Empire, to produce resources and services for the center of the Empire. According to this thinking, Russia cannot help but expand, because then it would cease to be what it is, a great power.
Maintaining great power status creates a perpetual motion machine, the driving force of which is the fear of a surprise attack and invented and real images of one's own and others' weaknesses and strengths.
Alexei Podberezkin, who was influential in the Russian parliament in the late 1990s in the ranks of the communists and who is still actively commenting on Russia's military strategy, defined a simple foreign policy guideline based on the idea of Russia's great power:
"There is no need to hide our intentions, but the unification of Slavic countries must be presented as something that these countries themselves want, and preventing it would mean interfering in a natural process."
The intellectual roots of this way of thinking can be traced back to interwar German geopolitics, perhaps best represented in Russia by Aleksander Dugin.
The German concept of Großraum – the greater region – has given rise to the idea of Russia’s right to unite different regions and populations into a “Russian world”. In this scenario, Russia’s neighbours have only two roles to play. To be a bridgehead for an attack on Russia, or to fulfil “their historical role as a Russian outpost”. But as Osmo Jussila states in his insightful analysis published in 1983, “The Soviet Union Russifies the regions it conquers rather than conquers Russian lands”.
Neither Russian rulers nor military scientists have been able to fully rely on the fact that the borders drawn by power politics would remain permanent. Therefore, Russian strategy has followed a simple formula for decades. In it, Russia’s power politics are presented as the natural state of affairs, while opposition to Russia’s actions are labeled as abnormal and dangerous actions that lead to conflict.
By what means, then, does Russia seek to advance its own goals? Here, I will highlight two key features of Russia’s strategy:
First, Russia seeks to expand its sphere of influence primarily through methods other than the use of armed force. These methods may be very violent, but the goals are pursued below the threshold of war, through pressure and persuasion.
Second, in order to achieve its goals, Russia must conceal its true intentions and purposes. To this end, Russia manipulates the concepts used to explain the conflict. It seeks to reinforce images of its own superiority, i.e. to incite fear. And at the same time to present itself as an external resolver of the conflict.
Strategic Obfuscation as Part of Russia’s Grand Strategy
As I mentioned above, obfuscation is an essential part of Russia’s grand strategy.
Russia has a long history of creating fantasy worlds to justify its own actions. By manipulating concepts and the causal relationships between events, the perception of the goals of Russia’s actions, the interests that guide them, and the limitations of its actions is obscured.
For example, the war in Ukraine is presented as a Western attempt to weaken Russia. Ukraine is portrayed as a vassal of the West, manipulated into abandoning its “true Russian roots” and breaking away from the “Russian world.”
On the other hand, in the Russian media and political discourse, Ukraine is also given the role of a villain. Hate speech and dehumanizing images of Ukraine and Ukrainians have been normalized and are used to justify the continuation of the war and harsh measures in the occupied territories.
This is all happening very openly, and therefore it is important that the future peace agreement creates the conditions for continuing the investigation of war crimes committed by Russia.
On the interpretation of Russian actions
However, it is not enough to recognize the contradictions and lies that Russia exploits to support its policy; they must be placed in a broader strategic context.
Russia is currently offering the West a solution in accordance with the philosophy of classical war: an agreement on interests, symbolized by excluding Ukraine from NATO, disarming it and forcing it into the status of a vassal, part of the ‘Russian world’.
The West has experience with this.
Take, for example, the article written by the American diplomat and scholar George Kennan in May 1945, but only published as part of his memoirs in 1967, on Russia’s international position after World War II.
According to Kennan, Russia is seeking to consolidate its dominance in the region of Eastern and Central Europe by feeding the image of Western leaders, especially the United States, that cooperation with Russia/the NL is possible and even necessary for maintaining world peace.
However, the West could, by its own actions, prevent Russia/NL from achieving all its goals, Kennan wrote. The condition would be that the West would find somewhere sufficient backbone and prevent Russia from receiving moral and material support for its policy of conquest.
I bring up Kennan here because he represents a line that does not in principle deny Russia’s right to interests. Kennan openly criticized the Soviet Union’s repressive policy, but he rejected the idea that the small peoples targeted by it also had a right to statehood. “There were more important issues than where the border exactly lay,” Kennan wrote in April 1951.
Although Kennan is best known as the father of the US containment policy, he also became one of its main critics. In Kennan’s opinion, the Soviet Union would collapse due to the internal weaknesses of the system. In the meantime, the West should not provoke Russia militarily, but focus on countering Russian political influence. This Kennanian line is later represented by, for example, John Mearsheimer, who believes that Russia's actions are reactive, a response to the expansion of NATO and the EU into its sphere of influence.
But as I stated at the beginning of my lecture, this conclusion is incorrect, at least insufficient.
Russia's actions provide information about its goals
A special feature of strategy and security policy research is that researchers often lack access to information that is essential for understanding the current situation. Only in retrospect do we better see the backgrounds and motives of decision-making.
From this perspective, however, I would venture to argue that Russia's war in Ukraine and the draft agreement under discussion have clarified the picture of Russia's goals and motives. We therefore know with greater certainty from what starting points Russia is operating and what it is aiming for.
Russia's attack on Ukraine in 2022 was not the starting point of the war, but it decisively changed its nature. Instead of a slow drawdown, the purpose of the Russian attack was to achieve a quick victory in Ukraine, divide the country into parts and defeat the resistance by force in the areas conquered by Russia. However, the goal of the war is not to annex new territories to Russia, but with it Russia wants to restore its former great power position in Europe.
To achieve its goals, Russia uses the formula described above – reinforcing the image that it has a natural, historical right to extend its power beyond its own borders. And that maintaining peace and avoiding conflict is not Russia’s responsibility. The attack is disguised as a necessity, a reaction to an external or internal threat.
With the help of Trump, Russia has managed to insinuate this formula into the Ukraine peace plan. So why would Russia think that it could not repeat the same trick again, i.e. disguise the attack as defense, a reaction to a Western threat? Especially when during the process, Russia’s image of the West as a weak actor has presumably only strengthened.
Although the situation now seems difficult, even small things have their way.
Osmo Apunen, who has studied Paasikivi’s thinking for decades, summarized this doctrine as follows: it was just necessary to find a way to more favorable conditions through temporary arrangements.
Ukraine has refused to play by the Russian script and is therefore still in the game. However, the Russian leadership believes that time is on Russia’s side and has not backed down from its maximum ambitions. Instead, it has used the agreement process to reinforce discord and contradictions in Europe and between Europe and the United States.
The task of European countries is to act as an anchor for Ukraine and to build an arrangement that will lead to more favorable conditions.
Researching Russian security policy in the shadow of war
To conclude my celebratory lecture, I would like to say a few words about conducting research in the shadow of war.
When I started this position in 2017, I defined the Mannerheim Professorship as the subject of research into the internal logic of Russian strategic thinking, familiarization with the starting assumptions and concepts used to make policy. I wanted to highlight the differences and similarities between Russian thinking and the more familiar Western tradition of thought. I also raised the issue of the significance of the war of questions for Russian strategic thinking.
In retrospect, it is easy to see that I underestimated the significance of Ukraine in the thinking of the Russian leadership. I also did not explain the role of active actions as part of the escalation of conflicts clearly enough.
However, it is unrealistic to assume that we as researchers do not make mistakes. The ideas I present here about Russian strategy have arisen through insight and error, in a critical dialogue with previous research.
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It is important to continue the cooperation between the University of Helsinki and the National Defence University within the framework of the Mannerheim Professorship. My colleagues in the Russia group at the National Defence University are studying Russian military strategy, the transformation of the armed forces and civil-military relations in Russia.[20]
The research group of the Mannerheim Professorship that I lead[21] complements this picture by examining how war shapes the structures of Russian society and the moral and ideological foundations of action. The research results are expected to increase understanding of war as a force for change in Russia and to provide a significant contribution to the discussion on the threat Russia poses to European security.
I would like to thank the foundations that made this cooperation possible for directing funding to research on Russian security policy and military strategy.
At the same time, it is important to strengthen research and teaching on Ukrainian politics, society, language and literature in Finland. In the Faculty of Humanities, the Department of Languages and the Aleksanteri Institute work together to develop teaching. Other universities are also working towards this goal. I hope that decision-makers will understand the strategic importance of teaching and research on Ukraine and direct funding to this region as well.
It is a good idea to end today's final lecture with this thought.
I wish all the listeners a good evening, and thank you once again to those who participated in the organization of the celebration!
Santeri participated in a panel discussion titled Military Chaplains in War and Peace with Fr. Sergiy Berezhnoy and Fr. Mikko Sidoroff at the conference Orthodox Christian Churches and War: Trajectories of Armed Conflicts and the Religious Construction of Adversaries in Joensuu from 25th to 27th September 2025. The lively panel discussion was chaired by Jarkko Kosonen and addressed topics of military ethics and military chaplaincy during times of war and peace. Santeri contributed to the discussion by clarifying the background of deepening church-military relations in Russia. He also attempted to assess the difficult question of Russian military priests’ significance in the ongoing war of aggression.
Santeri participated in a conference Regime Legitimation in Russia Under Putin organised as part of the research project Values-based Legitimation in Authoritarian Regimes: The Case of Russia (LegitRuss) in Sofia from September 12nd to 14th. During the conference, Santeri presented a work in progress that examines how Patriarch Kirill refers to apocalypse in the changing Russian political landscape. This research is a continuation of recently published work by Santeri on the concept of Katechon (see
The Mannerheim Working Group attended the XI ICCEES World Congress in London in July 2025 to present its research. Santeri Kytoneva presented his paper, "Demystifying neoconservative ideology production aimed at Russian military and security forces audiences." At a separate conference panel with Professor Yuliya Krylova-Grek, Katri Pynnoniemi and Amelie Tolvin presented their completed article "Kremlin strategic deception during the war against Ukraine." Finally, Viktor Lambin gave a presentation of his work in progress on the dehumanisation and enemization of Others in Z-Telegram.
In addition to presenting research at the conference, we visited the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) to discuss various relevant issues of the war in Ukraine with Nick Reynolds, research fellow for Land Warfare at RUSI. The visit was organised by our colleague Céline Marangé (Institute for Strategic Research, IRSEM, Paris).
A Hands-On Workshop in the Margins of the 2025
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What You'll Learn
Through a real-world case study examining Russia's self-perceived military strengths and weaknesses (click
Why Attend?
Read more about this event
Dear all,
We invite you to participate in a workshop on Russian Enemy Propaganda organised by the Mannerheim professorship's working group.
The workshop aims to further research, establish connections, and discuss possible research projects. The workshop focuses on Russia's propaganda against Ukraine in the context of the ongoing war. We will talk about the identities of Ukrainian and foreign combatants and non-combatants which the Kremlin's propaganda attempts to construct for both domestic and foreign audiences.
We will have one session which includes a keynote presentation on Russia Today's representations of the Russia-Ukraine war and the identities of the key players by Dr Precious Chatterje-Doody from the Open University, UK.
Time: October 22nd , from 15:00 to 16:30.
Place: Metsätalo, C324 Humina, University of Helsinki, Unioninkatu 40.