Tuesday Newspapers: Finns from Opposing Camps, Teens Help Elks and Needle Park Reorganization | Yle News

Why are two Finns fighting on opposite sides in the Ukraine war?

Open image viewer

Friend or foe? Helsingin Sanomat tells the unlikely story of two Finns meeting on opposite sides of a Ukrainian battlefield.

“Vaasa,” who fights in the Ukrainian forces, took “Jari,” who is in the Russian forces, as a prisoner of war.

Vaasa has a military background and said his decision to fight in Ukraine was largely professional. He explained that in his case the alternative would have been to join a crisis management force in Lebanon.

Jari was only a few years old when his family moved to Finland from the Soviet Union in the late 1980s. His native language is Finnish and he lived most of his life in Finland.

HS writes that Jari never found his place in Finnish society and ended up leading a life of crime that ultimately prevented him from obtaining Finnish citizenship. Moving to Russia also did not distract him from crime, which ultimately resulted in his imprisonment and deployment to the battlefield.

Jari will likely remain imprisoned in Ukraine. As Jari is not a Finnish citizen, the Finnish authorities have no obligation to help him. His options at the moment are poor, according to HS, who also mentions Vaasa’s sympathy for his fellow Finn.

Get a weekly summary of the main news by subscribing to Yle’s newsletter service with your Yle identifier.

Smart teenagers

Some 13,000 accidents involving wild animals occurred on Finnish roads last year, most involving collisions with deer and elk.

A new invention developed by four teenage girls in the US state of Colorado could help reduce these accidents, reports Ilta-Sanomat, explaining that their device called “Project Deer” uses infrared cameras and machine learning to warn drivers when an animal could be nearby.

The project, which started as a school mission, has already secured $12,000 in funding from tech giant Samsung for a prototype.

Until now, Finland’s response to preventing collisions with animals has been a low-tech solution: fences located along roads. The Finnish Road Safety Council, however, stressed that this system is not foolproof, as the risks of collision with an elk are particularly high in areas bordering these fences, especially in the dark.

Recover an urban park

The City of Helsinki is studying ways to clean up Katri Valas Park in Sörnäinen. Named after a poet, the park has long been synonymous with drug sales and use.

Hufvudstadsbladet reports that plans are underway this fall to build an eight-meter-high spiral-shaped climbing tower and a gym for residents, who say the situation in their neighborhood is now even worse than before .

According to HBL, this is due to the synthetic hallucinogen Alpha PVP which triggers bizarre behavior.

The newspaper asked Heikki Porola from the Helsinki police if he believed that drug use and trafficking had increased in Katri Valas Park.

“This is what we call hidden crime. Of course we see disruptive behavior, but I could also name 10 to 15 other places in Helsinki that have the same problems,” he said, adding that it was also important that residents themselves took an active approach to caring for their neighborhood.

Users with a Yle ID can leave comments on our news. You can create your Yle ID via this link. Our commenting and moderation guidelines are explained here.