Finnish entrepreneur pivots from St Petersburg to Kyiv, bets on Ukraine reconstruction boom

• Riihimäki has reinvented himself as a bridge-builder connecting Finnish firms with Ukraine's reconstruction economy after being forced out of Russia
• Ukraine's rebuilding is estimated at $500–1,000 billion, creating one of Europe's largest infrastructure markets for a generation
• Finnish trade with Russia collapsed after 2022 sanctions, leaving a gap that entrepreneurs are now trying to fill with Ukrainian contracts
• Nordic state trade promotion bodies have been slow to facilitate the shift, leaving individual entrepreneurs to navigate the pivot largely on their own

When Finland's consulate in St Petersburg was forced to close in autumn 2023, Henri Riihimäki packed up a career built on bridging Finnish and Russian business. As Hufvudstadsbladet reports, Riihimäki has since reinvented himself as a facilitator for Finnish companies looking to enter Ukraine's reconstruction market — arguing bluntly that Finland's commercial future lies east of the EU's current frontier, just not in the country where he spent years building contacts.

The pivot is more than one entrepreneur's career change. It is a compressed illustration of what is happening across Finnish — and Nordic — business. Before February 2022, Russia was a major trading partner for Finland: bilateral trade exceeded €10 billion annually, with thousands of Finnish firms operating across the border. EU sanctions and Russian countersanctions reduced that to a fraction. Finnish exports to Russia fell by roughly 70 percent in the first year after the full-scale invasion. The infrastructure of cross-border commerce — consulates, logistics chains, banking relationships, personal networks — collapsed in months.

Ukraine's reconstruction, estimated by the World Bank at upwards of $500 billion and by some calculations closer to $1 trillion, represents one of the largest infrastructure rebuilding programs in European history. Finnish companies have relevant expertise: construction in harsh climates, energy systems, water treatment, digital infrastructure, demining technology. Riihimäki's bet is that the same firms that once sold into Russia can redirect eastward — but toward Kyiv rather than Moscow.

The question is whether they will get there before their Nordic competitors. Sweden's Business Sweden has run dedicated Ukraine programs since 2023. Norway, with its substantial aid commitments and energy sector expertise, has positioned Norwegian firms early for energy infrastructure contracts. Denmark's Investment Fund for Developing Countries has earmarked capital for Ukrainian projects. Finland's state trade promotion apparatus — Business Finland — has been comparatively cautious, running informational events but offering less structured entry support than its Scandinavian counterparts. That gap is precisely where entrepreneurs like Riihimäki have stepped in, filling a role that in Sweden or Norway would more likely be handled by a state-backed body.

Finnish trade with Ukraine remains modest. Pre-invasion bilateral trade hovered around €500 million annually — a twentieth of the former Russia trade. Post-invasion figures show growth in specific sectors, particularly construction materials and IT services, but the base is small. The reconstruction contracts, when they flow at scale, will be enormous — and they will go to companies that established relationships and local knowledge early.

Riihimäki's trajectory captures a broader Nordic pattern: the post-Russia commercial world is being shaped less by government strategy than by individual entrepreneurs who lost their Russian market and went looking for the next one. The state trade bodies publish reports and host seminars. The people who actually know how to operate in difficult post-Soviet business environments are the ones who spent years in St Petersburg — and got pushed out.

Finland's consulate in St Petersburg employed dozens of people facilitating thousands of visa and trade interactions per year. Riihimäki now works the Ukraine circuit largely on his own.

Sources: Hufvudstadsbladet