Ukraine is fighting the war which Russia wants to bring to the rest of Europe, Finland included.

Ukrainians are paying for our peaceful skies with their lives. That makes us debtors, not donors. What we send isn't charity, it's a payment on what we owe.

Finland pays back what it owes. In 1919 Finland bought food on credit from the United States. When the Depression came, the other debtor nations took Hoover's 1931 moratorium as a pardon and stopped paying. In 1934 President Roosevelt told Congress that Finland was the only foreign government that had met all its payments to the United States punctually and in full. When the Winter War began in 1939, Americans knew Finland as the country that paid its debts.

In 1944 the Moscow Armistice made Finland pay war reparations to the Soviet Union, mostly in ships and machinery. Finland built whole industries to deliver it, and the last reparations train crossed the border at Vainikkala on 19 September 1952.

That debt was forced on us. This one we owe because someone else is paying in our place.

A large share of Ukraine's fight now flies. Cheap FPV drones, reconnaissance wings and interceptors do work that used to take artillery, aircraft and many more soldiers. Every drone that does the job is a soldier who doesn't have to.

Drones are consumables. Units go through them by the thousand every month, and much of the supply is paid for by us directly, not through taxes and party political state budgets.