First initiative (open Feb 21) proposes a NATO membership referendum, the other (open Feb 28) proposes that parliament should go ahead to membership procedures without referendum, because of expected Russian harrasment and influence on the referendum procedures.
The government portal for initiatives has been very slow today. The authentication to sign any of the initiatives is done either by a person ID smartcard, or bank-based identification. Most people use the bank authentication (in most cases 2FA using mobile phone) because they don't bother with smart card readers.
The first of the initiatives has already passed the threshold (50 000) which automatically brings it to the table in Parliament. The other initiative has collected 35 000 signatures in 30 hours, meaning it will also pass the threshold tomorrow, despite many people not being able to sign it due to bank connections failing under DDoS.
YLE (state broadcaster) news about the attack: https://yle.fi/uutiset/3-12338542
Initiative 1 (referendum): https://www.kansalaisaloite.fi/fi/aloite/9866 Initiative 2 (parliament direct decision): https://www.kansalaisaloite.fi/fi/aloite/9997
It's was already in today's printed newspaper that the parliament will put NATO membership on the session agenda. Nordea is the biggest bank in Finland so there could be all kind of reasons to DDoS them. But not having more people sign the petition seems a far-fetched one. Polls show that support to join raised from 30% in January to 53% in the last poll. The last poll started already before Putin's attack and especially the news that this time Europe does not only watch and make some symbolic declarations, so one can easily assume that support has gone up since then.
Should it become mainline news that this attack was directed against signing the petition, support will go up further.
My feeling is bringing down the petition site would be much easier than the bank that many but far from all potential sginers need for authentication. The petition site is little used after all and has not gained much attention before, certainly not internationally. 50,000 signers needed. Over 90% of the petitions get just a small fraction of that during the 6 months a petition can be supported. Nordea bank handles that many customers in just a couple of hours every day and they have been target of DDoS before.
Yesterday, 2022-03-01 at roughly 09:00 UTC, I was completely blocked from accessing my bank account. Eight hours later, at roughly 17:00 UTC, it took me several attempts, each loading for over a minute, until I gained access to my account. "Normal" issues fail immediately, so this time felt completely different.
The YLE news article stated that this was indeed a DoS attack, and I think it's been years since a Finnish bank was targeted.
It's top of mind enough for them to have just issued a threat of “military and political consequences” if Sweden or Finland were to join NATO.
https://thehill.com/policy/international/russia/595853-russi...
This entire war is about Ukraine joining NATO, and the expanding NATO influence in general. How would another bordering country having a NATO referendum not be top of mind for Russia?
I'm not so sure. It seems Putin really doesn't like NATO, and especially doesn't want Russia's neighbors belonging to it.
I'm also not sure how important these two initiatives are in practice since it's clear that the politicians are already very much aware of the increased support for NATO membership.
Unless someone screws up we will probably never know for certain.
1. The current Ukraine contains historically Russian territories that were moved to Ukraine in the era of USSR. Russian government cannot ignore originally Russian people living there. And Ukrainian nationalists are quite dangerous people. They are repressing proRussian people in the east. This is not something that Putin made up. My Russian acquaintances who work in the west directly know acquaintances and relatives living in the east Ukraine who witnessed such repression, namely, torture and murder. They joined the overturning of the government in 2014 holding the same flag as that they used when they cooperated with Nazis in 1940's. American government seems to often fund and arm such group of (almost terrorist) people, as they did to Mujahidn in Afghanistan (closely related to Taliban and AlQuaida) when it fought against Soviet.
2. The US have actually interfered with Ukraine and was likely involved in overturning the democratically elected Ukrainian government in 2014, establishing a puppet. Most notably, there was evidence, leaked conversation between American officials about who they want as the next Ukrainian leader. They had this conversation before the overturn actually happened, which even those US officials themselves admitted, although they denied American support of the overturn. Joe Biden was at the top of the then US administration, and his son earned millions of dollars in Ukraine afterwards. Anyone would suspect his deep involvement from this.
3. Russia has always been threatened by the economic aggression by the US. Putin was at first friendly to orgarches and the US when he took the position of president, but he started fighting them when they tried to sell off the shares of the companies that possess Russian natural resources to American capitals in 2004. If this had happened, the Russian oil money would have directly flowed into the US capitals, and therefore wouldn't have been accessible to Russian people. Notably, I was impressed by how IMF forced a country to privatise their state-owned companies and then American capitals tried to absorb them. Fortunately, this aggression was stopped by Putin, and a half of the shares of Russian oil companies are now owned by the state. This appears to be the key to the reason why the American government regard Putin as enemy.
4. Western media are highly suspected to intentionally broadcast distorted images of Putin. A typical example is Navalny's assassination. He claimed that he rang FSB agents and recorded their confession of the attempted assassination, by pretending to be their boss on the phone. What is this stupid story? He barely escaped from the assassination by FSB, and the notorious Russian spy agents confessed their attempt of assassination on the phone? Well, I personally believe that Putin is killing his opponents when they threaten his power. But, after hearing many such crappy stories from the western media, I started to believe Putin's opponents are sponsored by westerners that try to economically exploit Russia. 5. The current Ukrainian president who was from the south but elected by people in the pro-EU part, Zelensky, provoked Russia to an unthinkable extent. He showed the will to get back crimea, to crush the rebels in the east, to join NATO, and to increase their armament to cope with Russia (even nuclear armament). The first three plainly violates the Minsk agreement, and undermines Germany and France who joined it. Based on this fact, any sensible people would think that he risked own people's lives. From the fact that he could boldly do this, I suspect that he was backed by the US. No other countries would have been able to give him confidence to do so.
All these stories and others that I hear consistently indicate American aggression. Thus, despite pro-western media in my country, I started to believe that, even though Putin is a dictator and killing his opponents, he tells more genuine things. Europeans should reconsider their relationship with the US that destabilise Europe.
By the way, I found your post totally unhinged, though you did hide it pretty well until your final point where the guy ordering assassinations against his political opponents(read: “when they threaten his power”) is somehow painted as the reasonable and moral person.
Putin life's work is bringing some imagined Russian glory back. But that's the exact mentality that brought suffering on the Russians through the ages. Be it a Tzarist Russia, a communist Russia or a putinist Russia. The common Russian was always sacrificed for some imagined Russian glory.
It's amazing that you can brush away the fact that Putin murders politicians activists and journalist who expose his corruption, and you still think he is genuine. Remember that he denied that he is going to invade ukrain multiple times just before he invaded? The only truth Putin recognizes is power. He will use half truths to manipulate, control and assert his dominance. Compare for example the western rhetoric blaming the war on Putin while acknowledging the common Russian as a victim. Putin's rhetoric OTOH is generalizing the enemy as some fictive "westerner" conglomerate coming after russia. This sort of demagogy is a tool to prepare a people for bloodshed and war, not for peace.
However, I will say this: even if one accepts everything that you claim at face value, nothing justifies what Putin/Russia are doing in Ukraine right now.
