Sauli Niinisto, now halfway through his second six-year term as Finnish president, tends to be discreet.
A lawyer by training, Niinisto is the leader of the European Union’s northernmost member—which also happens to be the one that shares the longest border with Russia—and is the only Western leader who could be said to have good relations with both Russian President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President Donald Trump. “He knows which fights to pick and which to avoid,” observes Michael O’Hanlon of the Brookings Institution.
