Finland ought theoretically to be safe since it has historically been neutral and gave Stalin's Soviet army a hard
time when he invaded the country in 1939.
There has never been much support here to
join the Nato military alliance. But when the spokeswoman for the Russian
foreign ministry recently warned Finland and Sweden explicitly that any move
towards Nato could have military consequences, people in both countries were
deeply shocked.
Since then, Russian warplanes have
blatantly intruded into Swedish airspace.
If being neutral is not sufficient to
guard against Russia, people here are saying that maybe joining Nato will give
the two countries the protection they need.
This represents a major change of mood. In
Finland, particularly, relations with Russia were thought to be pretty good.
The Ukraine invasion has changed
everything.
A few days before the Russian troops moved
in, Aleksi Salonen and Sampo Muhonen, a couple of geeks - their own description
of themselves - were sitting in a Helsinki flat gaming. During a pause, they
started talking about the growing threat from Russia and agreed that it would
be safer for Finland to apply for Nato membership.
They mentioned the idea to three friends
online, and between them, the five cooked up a plan to collect signatures for a
petition to the Finnish parliament.
In order to launch a debate by MPs, a
proposal has to have 50,000 signatures. Within 10 days they had reached 70,000.
They had touched a nerve in the Finnish
population, and now the matter will be put to the government. The latest
opinion polls indicate that a majority of people support the idea.
Finland is a cautious country, and its
government is particularly so. When I asked Defence Minister Antti Kaikkonen
for his views, he was careful not to give an answer. He acknowledged the
situation was difficult but said that joining Nato was something that required
very careful consideration.
Perhaps the Finnish government wants to
see what happens in Ukraine before it makes up its mind. Clearly, the Russians
won't invade another country when their hands are full with the fighting in
Ukraine.
Viewed
from Finland, there are some striking similarities between the attack on
Ukraine and the invasion of Finland in 1939 - the Winter War, as it's known.
Joseph
Stalin, full of self-confidence, sent his army into Finland only to find that
its resistance was far greater than his generals had assured him. The Finns
staged a largely guerrilla war against an army that was huge, but whose morale
had been seriously damaged by the treason trials of a year or so earlier, in
which the majority of the most senior figures were purged and executed.
The Winter
War dragged on for months before negotiations finally began and an agreement
was reached. Russia took some territory from Finland, but the Finns kept their
independence - and have done so ever since.
The
invasion of Ukraine has similarly been mismanaged. The logistical side was
botched from the start, with too little fuel, food, and water supplied to the
troops - many of whom had been assured they were only carrying out an exercise.
Western
analysts say even maps were in short supply, with tank drivers often having to
stop to get directions. This was not by any means a Blitzkrieg, and the
prerequisite for any modern war - the destruction of the enemy's communications
- simply never happened.
None of
this means that President Vladimir Putin won't win in the end.
He has
already assured France's President Macron that he will go on until he takes the
whole of Ukraine. The danger is that if he cannot do it with his conventional
forces, the temptation will be strong to use his tactical nuclear weapons to
force Ukraine to surrender.
Russian nuclear theory seems to regard
this as an acceptable risk; Western experts are much more worried by the
possibilities. There can be no certainties if that threshold is crossed.
Russia claims to have invaded Ukraine
because it wanted to save the Ukrainian people from neo-fascism. What President
Putin really seems to want to ensure - apart from avenging what he sees as
Ukraine's treachery in breaking away from Russia - is that there is no question
of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky joining Nato.
In fact, that genuinely doesn't seem to
have been a possibility within the foreseeable future.
But there is a real irony in the fact that
the war in Ukraine now seems to be giving Finland - and perhaps Sweden - a real
cause for considering whether they should join the Western military alliance.
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