Finland’s Prime Minister Sanna Marin on Friday made a “very honest” assessment of Europe’s capabilities in light of Russia’s war against Ukraine, saying that Europe is “not strong enough” to stand up to Moscow on its own, France Presse reported.

During his visit to Australia, the leader of the candidate country for NATO membership emphasized that Russia’s invasion and occupation of neighboring Ukraine revealed Europe’s weaknesses and strategic mistakes in relation to Moscow.

“I have to be very frank (…) with you, Europe is not strong enough at the moment, we would be in trouble without the United States,” she told the Lowy Institute, a Sydney think tank.

Marin insisted that Ukraine needed to be helped “by all means,” adding that the United States had played a central role in providing Kyiv with the weapons, financial resources and humanitarian aid needed to halt Russia’s advance.

“We have to make sure that we also strengthen those capabilities in terms of European defense, European defense industry and that we can deal with different types of situations,” she said.

According to AFP, Finland gained independence from Russia almost 105 years ago and, despite having almost no weapons, inflicted heavy casualties on the invading Soviet army soon after.

Finland’s prime minister has criticized European Union policies that emphasize engagement with Russian President Vladimir Putin and said the bloc should listen to member states that were part of the Soviet Union before its collapse.

Since joining the European Union in 2004, countries such as Estonia and Poland have called on other EU members to take a tougher line on Putin, a position softened by France, Germany, Italy and Greece, which favor closer economic ties with Moscow

“For a long time, Europe has been building a strategy towards Russia to strengthen our economic ties, to buy energy carriers from Russia (…), we thought that this would prevent a war,” but this approach turned out to be “absolutely fair.” wrong,” Ms. Marin criticized.

“They don’t care about economic ties, they don’t care about sanctions. They don’t care about all that,” she added. (Agerpress)