But at the same time, Niinistö was also meeting regularly with Putin, taking his measure. It didn’t take long for Putin to make it clear that in his view what was his was his—and what used to be Finland’s was also his. “In our first meeting—that was 2012—he suddenly said to me, ‘Why are you heading for NATO? You can’t get Karelia back,’ ” said Niinistö, referring to territory that the Soviets took from Finland in the last days of World War II. (The Karelian region has changed hands many times over the centuries; today it is divided between Finland and Russia.)
