Double regional and municipal elections ended on April 13 in Finland. The Social Democratic Party of Finland won.
However, only municipal elections were held in the countryʼs capital, Helsinki, and the Coalition Party won by a small margin — this means that the mayor of the city will be Daniel Sazonov, who is of Russian origin and wrote columns for the Russian-language "Finnish Newspaper" before the full-scale invasion.
This was reported by the Finnish state broadcaster Yle.
Sazonov was born in Helsinki and received Finnish citizenship at the age of 9, giving up his Russian citizenship. He says he has no ties to Russia and hasnʼt been there "for years".
He was previously the deputy mayor of Helsinki and was responsible for the social sphere. In addition, the Finnish newspaper Iltalehti previously reported that Sazonov actively wrote for the anti-Ukrainian propaganda newspaper "Finnish Newspaper", which has close ties to the Russian regime in the Kremlin. The politician himself says that he wrote in order to tell Russian-speaking Finns about Finnish politics.
He stopped doing this a few months after the Russian Federationʼs full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and claims that he has not been in contact with the publication since then. All because he was no longer sure that it unequivocally condemned Russiaʼs illegal aggressive war.
Sazonovʼs last column was published in the May-June 2022 issue of the newspaper — it was about helping Ukrainian refugees. In the previous issue, from March-April, he criticized the Russian invasion and also called for support for Ukrainians fleeing the war. In other texts published in 2022, Sazonov wrote mainly about the events in Helsinki.
Sazonov says he condemns Russian aggression, supports sanctions against the Russian Federation, and has also supported Ukraine in his publications.
Coalition Party Secretary Timo Elo believes that Sazonov wrote his articles with good intentions. According to him, Sazonov was engaged in the integration of the Russian-speaking population in Finland.
Party Secretary Timo Elo emphasizes the importance of distinguishing between the periods before and after the start of Russian aggression, noting that previously everyone sought to maintain good neighborly relations. He believes that at that time it was quite normal and right for Finnish politicians to maintain contacts with Russia, since the war had not yet started. At the same time, he noted that the situation has now changed radically, and today the party does not maintain any official contacts with Russia.
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