Deputy Director General for Africa, Middle East and Latin America at @Ulkoministerio. RT:s not necessarily endorsements.
Helsinki, Finland
Joined June 2015
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Timo Olkkonen🇫🇮 🇪🇺🇺🇦 retweeted
President of Finland @AlexStubb received credentials from the new Ambassador of Botswana, Juliana Angela Dube-Gobotswang (accredited from Stockholm).
Timo Olkkonen🇫🇮 🇪🇺🇺🇦 retweeted
If I were a Russian, I really wouldn't start telling the Nordics that medieval history justifies invasions.
Putin spent most of a 90-minute call today lecturing the leaders of Finland and Norway on medieval Slavic history rather than discussing a peace deal in Ukraine, three people familiar with the conversation told the FT. ft.com/content/a384acd1-c90c…
Timo Olkkonen🇫🇮 🇪🇺🇺🇦 retweeted
Warm congratulations to President @LulaOficial on your re-election.
I wish you every success in leading your country and look forward to continuing the excellent cooperation between us and our nations also in the upcoming term.
Timo Olkkonen🇫🇮 🇪🇺🇺🇦 retweeted
How Many People Can Speak 3+ Languages By European Country
credit: @Maps_interlude
brilliantmaps.com/3-language…
Timo Olkkonen🇫🇮 🇪🇺🇺🇦 retweeted
I know Putin is a monster but seeing him ‘thanking Melania Trumр for her humanitarian effort’ in Oleshky after his own Russian army first occupied it to then starve the people there is some very special level of psychopathy
Timo Olkkonen🇫🇮 🇪🇺🇺🇦 retweeted
I welcome the Sakharov Prize awarded to the International Criminal Court.
For victims of the world's gravest crimes, justice means a voice.
The @IntlCrimCourt must be free to pursue its mission, independently, and without pressure or intimidation.
Europe stands firmly behind President Tomoko Akane, the Court's judges and officials, and their vital work for a world governed by rules.
Timo Olkkonen🇫🇮 🇪🇺🇺🇦 retweeted
The International Criminal Court and its officials have been awarded the European Parliament's 2026 Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought.
Learn more about the laureate here ➡️ link.europa.eu/rVBvTR
ALT A group of judges in blue robes sit in session at the International Criminal Court. The text reads: “2026 Laureates of the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought, The International Criminal Court and its officials, Democracy in action.” The European Parliament logo is in the bottom right‑hand corner.
Timo Olkkonen🇫🇮 🇪🇺🇺🇦 retweeted
Commander Magyar says:
Stay alert: how you are being deceived through generative AI-powered psychological operations in the information war. By both the swamp dwellers and those who call themselves “our own.”
As we in the Unmanned Systems Forces once again examine the technological challenges and risks of 2027, I rank this method—a form of cognitive operations—among the threats with strategic impact. So let me explain in plain language how it works.
When you ask an internet search engine a question, for example, “Why did X happen?” or something similar about a targeted topic—or even one that isn’t targeted—you instantly get a ready-made answer generated by a chatbot from the vastness of the web. Very convenient. But you need to understand where that answer comes from.
The chatbot searches through numerous news sources and texts and usually gives you a substantive answer, while below it, Google or whatever search engine you use displays dozens of pages of blue links to websites. Of course, reading a single compiled answer is quick and convenient. Just understand this:‼️artificial intelligence does not know the truth. It literally retells the internet.
Russia was among the first to grasp this, and here is what it is cooking up, systematically and deliberately poisoning AI with millions of fake articles: since 2022, the “Pravda” network of websites has gained momentum and remained active—close to two hundred sites in dozens of languages. These sites publish 10,000–20,000 similar articles every day, amounting to 4–6 million articles a year. These articles are not written for people. They are written for machines.
Here is what happens next: when 20,000 articles are created around a single false propaganda claim, published in different languages across hundreds of websites that also link to one another, the machine sees: lots of sources are reporting this, so it looks like the truth. And it dumps a lie on you in the chatbot’s characteristic descriptive yet confident manner, delivered in a neutral, non-judgmental tone. No telltale accents or traces of a propagandist, no “Rossiya 1” logo in the corner. Just presented as fact.
Research into ten of the world’s most popular chatbots has already found that, in a third of cases, they take in and reproduce narratives from Russian fake stories. The machine readily answers your question, “Why did X happen?” even when X is made up—meaning the lie is already embedded in the question. Back in 2024, four out of ten bots answered yes when asked, “Did Azov soldiers burn an effigy of Trump?” and provided links to sources. Try it. There are thousands of examples like this. Including ones about Magyar and the Birds—the worm goes berserk every fucking second.
We are losing ground to the worms’ troll farms in this war. Though we have bred an entire stratum of trolls of our own.
There is no “betrayal” here, and no advice to follow—just highlighting a threat that is under study alongside dozens of other challenges of today and tomorrow.
Critical thinking should not be delegated. Not even to the smartest machine. Use your head and always verify the source and the information.
We will stand
Moscow will fall
MAGYAR
16.10.26
Timo Olkkonen🇫🇮 🇪🇺🇺🇦 retweeted
General Keith Kellogg on Foxnews commenting on Ukraine‘s campaign targeting Russian refineries:
“Russia has been targeting schools, churches. Ukraine is attacking military targets. Russia is not winning and Ukraine has been really putting pressure on. (…) Ukrainians will not stop hitting Russian refineries, as they should. It’s a war and they are attacking correctly.”
Timo Olkkonen🇫🇮 🇪🇺🇺🇦 retweeted
Finland stands with the EU in calling for an immediate end to rising tensions in Ethiopia and the wider Horn of Africa. We support all diplomatic efforts toward peaceful resolution and the full implementation of the Cessation of Hostilities Agreement.
Statement by HR/VP @kajakallas on Ethiopia and regional implications.
Respect for international humanitarian law is imperative. Civilians need to be protected at all times, and unhindered humanitarian access must be ensured.
Read more: link.europa.eu/mrkKqg
Timo Olkkonen🇫🇮 🇪🇺🇺🇦 retweeted
The Nordic countries 🇩🇰🇫🇮🇮🇸🇳🇴🇸🇪 deeply regret the Russian and Chinese veto of the Iran sanctions Panel of Experts. The Panel was the UN's eyes and ears on Iran's nuclear programme. Ending it leaves a monitoring gap, and the UN General Assembly should now consider how to fill it.
ALT Closeup picture of Ambassador Elina Kalkku speaking in the General Assembly Hall at the United Nation's Headquarters. Speaking at the podium.
Timo Olkkonen🇫🇮 🇪🇺🇺🇦 retweeted
Cannot stop laughing - stereotypes can be hilarious #africaworks
Timo Olkkonen🇫🇮 🇪🇺🇺🇦 retweeted
Statement by HR/VP @kajakallas on Ethiopia and regional implications.
Respect for international humanitarian law is imperative. Civilians need to be protected at all times, and unhindered humanitarian access must be ensured.
Read more: link.europa.eu/mrkKqg
Timo Olkkonen🇫🇮 🇪🇺🇺🇦 retweeted
Libya: The 🇪🇺 is gravely concerned by the resumption of executions in Benghazi and Derna, marking the end of a de facto moratorium on the use of the death penalty in Libya that had been in place since 2010. Full statement👇🏼 link.europa.eu/fXFMK6
Timo Olkkonen🇫🇮 🇪🇺🇺🇦 retweeted
I am following with deep concern the situation in Tigray and in the neighbouring regions of Afar and Amhara, where hostilities have once again broken out. I extend my heartfelt plea to all parties to choose the path of dialogue. Armed conflict never solves problems, but only worsens them leaving in its wake a trail of death, destruction and resentment. Only honest engagement can lay the foundations for lasting peace. It is my fervent hope that the international community will offer its generous and timely contribution to ensuring that all humanitarian aid be provided to those in need.
Timo Olkkonen🇫🇮 🇪🇺🇺🇦 retweeted
Every line a beast
A map tracing one of the world's greatest wildlife migrations has won two international cartography awards. Lines of Life was recognised among more than 800 submissions for transforming wildlife tracking data into a powerful visual story.
Across South Sudan's Great Nile Migration Landscape, an estimated six million antelope move through floodplains, grasslands and drylands in search of the resources they need to survive. Using GPS collar data from white-eared kob, tiang, bohor reedbuck and Mongalla gazelle, the map captures the scale and complexity of these extraordinary journeys.
Every line represents an individual animal. Together, they reveal migration routes, seasonal movements and the vital corridors that keep this vast ecosystem connected.
Read the story: bit.ly/4rBKMm8
Timo Olkkonen🇫🇮 🇪🇺🇺🇦 retweeted
And if we extrapolate the events of 1938–1939 onto those of 2021–2022, then in our parallel reality Hitler was initially allowed to bite off the Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia — but when he once again massed his troops to take the whole country and attacked, he unexpectedly suffered a crushing failure outside Prague and, even more unexpectedly, became completely and hopelessly bogged down there in static warfare for years.
And in this parallel reality, instead of being betrayed by the Western democracies as it was in 1938, Czechoslovakia did receive military and economic assistance that, while rationed and limited, was nevertheless substantial, and developed an even more powerful and advanced defense industry and an army that managed to heroically stand up to the Reich on equal terms.
As a result, at least to this day, Czechoslovakia has held out.
Hitler did not get Czechoslovakia’s industry and resources. There was no subsequent invasion of Poland. Perhaps the conditions for the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, in the form in which it was concluded in 1939, would never have arisen either, meaning that Stalin’s Soviet Union would not have had the opportunity to divide Eastern Europe together with Hitler.
There was no defeat of France, no Battle of Britain, no occupation of Norway, no expansion into North Africa. Mussolini would not have gone much farther either without his catastrophically bogged-down ally. Japanese expansion in Asia and the Pacific might have taken a completely different course as well.
The Holocaust could not have happened in the historical form and on the scale that it did. There would have been no need to storm Omaha Beach.
And so on, and so on, and so on.
World War II as we know it might have stumbled, for Hitler, into a years-long slog over the ruins of border villages, just as Putin is still banging his head against Mala Tokmachka.
Think about that before asking yet again: why help Ukraine at all?
And don’t assume that Putin stopped after his own “Munich.” Like Hitler, he stopped where he was stopped by force.
But nothing is over yet.
Timo Olkkonen🇫🇮 🇪🇺🇺🇦 retweeted
EU deeply concerned by the rapidly deteriorating situation, military activity and take-over of airports in Tigray by TPLF forces.
-house arrests & other measures by TPLF against opposition must stop
- Alliance for Survival of concern-political dialogue needed,no military action
#Ethiopia: Statement by the Spokesperson
The EU is deeply concerned by the rapidly deteriorating situation in Northern Ethiopia.
Respect for international humanitarian law is non-negotiable.
Immediate de-escalation is needed.
link.europa.eu/Y3ktCk
Timo Olkkonen🇫🇮 🇪🇺🇺🇦 retweeted
Met with @alexstubb and @jonasgahrstore in New York. Finland and Norway are very strong partners of ours, and I am grateful for the substantive exchange we had. Of course, first and foremost, we discussed the winter package and protecting our energy infrastructure from Russian attacks. We are working to strengthen air defense as much as possible before winter sets in and to deprive Russia of its bet on ballistic terror. I also briefed them on the talks and meetings with the American team. There is no alternative to peace. And Russia must be pressured further – through sanctions and support for Ukraine – so that it learns this too.
And today, Alex and I also signed a Drone Deal – an important step for the joint protection of our people and an even stronger partnership between our countries. We are always ready to share with our closest friends what has helped us protect lives. Thank you!