Finnish Soldiers from the Finnish-Swedish Division ride the Leopard 2A6, a third-generation German main battle tank, during a border crossing demonstration by Swedish and Finnish troops as part of the NATO Nordic Response 24 military exercise on March 9, 2024. AFP/GETTY IMAGES
THE WATCH STAFF
Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly threatened retaliation against Finland after the Nordic country applied to join NATO in 2022 — a decision that reversed decades of nonalignment. Finland applied for NATO membership following Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, and Putin’s saber-rattling against Finland isn’t having its desired effect. Recent analyses indicate that Russia doesn’t have enough available soldiers to threaten a NATO member with much more than words, and the bombastic rhetoric has only strengthened Finnish resolve, recent polls show.
In March 2024, Putin told Russian state media that Finland had miscalculated by joining NATO, bolstering the alliance’s Nordic defense. Putin said he would place troops along the Finnish border, according to United Press International. “We generally had ideal relations with Finland. Simply perfect. We did not have a single claim against each other, especially territorial, not to mention other areas. We didn’t even have troops; we removed all the troops from there, from the Russian-Finnish border,” Putin said, according to UPI. “However, it is up to them to decide. That’s what they decided. But we didn’t have troops there, now we will.”
Putin’s threats aren’t likely to rattle the Finns, wrote defense expert Elisabeth Braw, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and a foreign-affairs columnist for Politico, a United States-based news and opinion website. In her April 8 Politico essay, Braw said that Russia has suffered massive casualties in two years of fighting in Ukraine and simply doesn’t have the manpower to threaten Finland anytime soon,. Braw quoted retired Finnish Maj. Gen. Pekka Toveri’s assessment of the Russian threat. “The Russians won’t have the resources to build infrastructure, produce new heavy weaponry and recruit considerable numbers of forces to our border before the 2030s,” said Toveri, who was recently elected to the Finnish Parliament. “Putin overplayed the mighty Russian military’s strength and underestimated the ability of Western politicians to understand basic arithmetic,” Braw concluded in her essay.
Finland’s 1,300-kilometer-long border with Russia is the longest in Europe. The swampy, thickly forested wilderness that comprises most of the border has thwarted Russian ambitions before. For centuries, Russian Tsars attempted to subjugate Finland, then part of Sweden. After Sweden lost a war with Russia in 1809, Finland became a self-governing part of the Russian empire until 1917, when it declared its independence in the wake of the Russian Revolution. Finland then fought off a Soviet invasion in 1939 in what’s known as the Winter War.
Today, Finland’s terrain still presents a challenge for the Russian military, which doesn’t have the necessary equipment to conduct modern warfare in the challenging conditions, Braw wrote for Politico. Perhaps even more importantly, Finns embrace conscription, and 80% of nearly 1,200 respondents to a January 2024 survey by the country’s Advisory Board for Defense Information (ABDI) said the country should defend itself militarily in all circumstances. Finland formally joined NATO in April 2023. Nine months later, Finns showed strong support for the transatlantic alliance and for Finland’s active participation in defending NATO from any threat. About 90% of Finns have a positive view of NATO, according to the poll. And while 60% of Finns see a threatening, uncertain future with Russia, positive feeling toward the U.S. and its allies is on the upswing, according to the ABDI poll.
“Now NATO is clearly seen as the most positive actor contributing to Finland’s security. The European Union comes second whereas the positive influence of the UN and the OSCE (Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe) has weakened. The positive impact of the United States on Finland’s security is also seen to have intensified. As far as Russia is concerned, Finns see only a negative impact on Finland’s security.”