Did Finnish prime minster say United States was controlled by Russia? Fact Check

Online messages claim the Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin jokingly commented that she thought the United States was under Russian control since January 20th 2017.

The date January 20th 2017 is when President Trump was inaugurated as the 45th President of the United States.

FALSE

An example of the claim is below.

John Bolton’s new book reveals that Trump thought Finland was under Russian control.
Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin says, “To be fair, we’ve thought the same thing about the United States since January 20th 2017.”
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The message is based on the news story that John Bolton – Trump’s former (and third) National Security Advisor – claimed in his book that Trump had believed Finland was controlled by Russia. The message above then asserts that in response, the Finnish Prime Minister jokingly commented that she believed it was the United States that was under Russian control – a reference to a prolific critique that Trump is being controlled by Russian president Vladimir Putin.

However, despite the popularity of these messages, there is no record of Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin saying this.

It is likely that the rumour originally started out as a joke. UK based Twitter feed Have I Got News For You (an account belonging to a UK comedy political quiz show) tweeted on the 18th June 2020 “As a new book alleges Donald Trump thought Finland was controlled by Russia, Finnish authorities say to be fair they thought the same about him.”

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This in turn inspired a number of “Finland thought the USA was controlled by Russia” themed jokes, before Twitter user Lin Peace authored the above message that many subsequently took at face value.

Members of the Finnish government have dismissed the viral rumours. The Finnish Director General of Government Communications, Päivi Anttikoski, wrote on Twitter –

As a confirmation even here: Prime Minister Marin has never commented on anything related to John Bolton’s book in any way. So the tweet that spread about the subject yesterday in the United States is not true.

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We rank this claim false.