Author: Jussi Niemeläinen
Finnish original: Muurista muuriin. Reportaasi Venäjän länsirajasta
Publisher: Siltala, 2025
Genre: non-fiction
Number of pages: 250 pp.
Reading material: Finnish original, English sample, English synopsis
Some were guessing Russia’s western border would disappear after the fall of the Soviet Union. That wasn’t the case, and Russia is now waging war about the location of the border instead. The book takes readers from the end of the Cold War to the current war in Ukraine and portrays how on different sides of the border the development started going at increasing speed in different directions: while the West was looking at the future, Russia started looking more and more fixedly at the past.
Niemeläinen, an expert reporter and correspondent with decades of experience about the contemporary history of Russia, travels from northern Norway to eastern Ukraine and meets along the way presidents, experts, ministers and ordinary people, who ponder how we ended up in this situation, and what lies ahead.
About the author
Jussi Niemeläinen