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The origins of my career as a peace mediator can be found from my childhood years. I was born in the city of Viipuri, then still part of Finland. We lost Viipuri when the Soviet Union attacked my country. Along with 400,000 fellow Karelians, I became an eternally displaced person in the rest of Finland.

Does anyone who leaves a Baltic country ever want to return to it? Someone must, I suppose.

I am also one of those persons who were transformed, who grew out of the Soviet system and transformed myself into the new Russia.

With my mother, I moved from one household to another before settling in the eastern part of Finland, in the city of Kuopio.

I don't know nothing about communism. But I know the Albanians loved me. Same reason as anyone else loves me. Because I made them laugh.

I am the face of a refugee. I was once a refugee. I was with my family in exile.

Soviet regime in a way deprived me from my childhood in my homeland, because my father was in military, and after the Yalta agreement he was sent to teach in military academy in Riga, and I was born then.

Before I left Russia in 1999, I was living in a very poor factory town with my family and friends, and nothing was ever going to change.

My parents separated soon after I was born, so I left Helsinki when I was a year old. My mother took me to Paris and then other places throughout Western Europe.