Main Finnish daily newspaper Helsingin Sanomat leads with a several page feature on Russia's economic and political woes and yesterday's press conference by Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow, in which Putin, according to journalist Pekka Hakala, appeared tired and absent-minded as he pronounced that Russia's economic difficulties will likely last for two years.
Russia's financial turmoil, in part due to Western sanctions against Russia and falling oil prices, has adversely affected the Finnish economy. Russian tourists are making fewer trips to Finland and spending less money owing to their diminishing purchasing power. Whereas a hotel room in Finland last Christmas at 100 euros per night cost 4,500 roubles, it now costs 7,500 roubles; an 8-euro hamburger meal was 360 roubles last December, now the same fast food meal costs 600 roubles.
Yesterday's carport bombing in the small Swedish-speaking town of Korsnäs shocked many people, as bombings are very rare in Finland; it's been more than a decade since the last one. Helsingin Sanomat writes that the suspected bomber was caught quite quickly - the bomb that injured one woman and destroyed a car went off at 8:21 am and by 3:27 pm police had rounded up the male suspect. Police would not say whether the woman, who was hospitalised, was the target of the bombing or not.
Tabloid Ilta-Sanomat devotes its cover to Russian President Vladimir Putin's press conference yesterday and follows up with a story from the Finnish city of Lappeenranta, on the Finnish-Russian border, which is greatly suffering the hardship of far fewer Russian tourists in the wake of the declining rouble (this week alone its value has depreciated by 15 percent). Several local shops in Lappeenranta are closing down, and the hotel and restaurant business has been hard hit.
Tabloid Iltalehti devotes its cover to the carport car-bombing story in Korsnäs. "It's unbelievable that this kind of thing can happen," Sven-Erik Bernas, the municipality's chairman of the board, told Iltalehti.
Iltalehti also features an interview with an air traffic controller, who spoke with the newspaper on the condition of anonymity, about the recent spate of Russian planes flying in Nordic airspace without their transponders on. "If I don't know exactly where the other plane is, I can't place flights at the correct flight levels," said the Finnish air traffic controller. "And that's extremely dangerous for air traffic as I'm responsible for hundreds of peoples lives."