Since many people know nothing about Finland, jump on click bait headlines and retweet without checking facts, here a short overview of the things Russia has threatened Finland with so far & what their consequences are/would be:
1. Cutting electricity exports as of today
No problem, thanks to a new nuclear power plant + wind power Finland will soon be self-sufficient and even a net exporter. Finland used to import ~10% from Russia. Sweden & the Baltics can compensate for any short-term shortages.
2. Cutting gas deliveries (will prob happen this month)
A bit annoying because some industries need gas but on the whole no problem because gas is only ~5% of Finland’s energy mix. Finland already works with Estonia on the purchase of a LNG terminal ship.
3. Ending the lease contract of the Saimaa canal (Finland has leased the part of the canal that runs through Russia)
Finland doesn’t really need it anyways & would end up saving a s*it ton of money from the modernisation of the infrastructure.
4. Stationing troops at the Finnish border
Currently the question is: what troops
In the long term expected to happen anyways, regardless of whether Finland is in NATO or not. Russia already declared Finland an enemy along with the other EU countries.
When I say Finland is prepared, I mean it. Russia has never NOT been THE security issue No. 1 for Finland. Although the world only recently found out about our 1340km border with Russia, we never once forgot about it. So rest assured, WE HAVE THOUGHT THIS THROUGH
Oh and one more thing: the Finns are actually happy that Russia is cutting off the remaining energy supplies because the Finnish people have been demanding their government to stop the exports on their own account.
So the joke’s basically entirely on Russia
*exports and imports. All of it.
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Russland ist nicht erst seit letzter Woche im Informationskrieg gegen euch, sondern versucht seit mindestens 10 Jahren (leider ziemlich erfolgreich) aktiv sowohl politische Entscheidungsfindung als auch öffentlichen Diskurs in 🇩🇪 zu beeinflussen !
Dabei kann Russland auf ein Netzwerk von Botschaftern, Generälen und Kanzlern a.D. sowie Politiker links- und rechtsaußen zurückgreifen die alle fröhlich die gewünschten Narrative in den deutschen Debatten aufrechterhalten.
Wir sind außerdem eh schon längst alle Kriegspartei in Russlands Augen. Russland ist laut Putins Propaganda im Krieg gegen die NATO und den Westen, und das ist was dort für Handlungsentscheidungen zählt, nicht das deutsche Grundgesetz.
Got tired of the defeatism that is AGAIN spreading in Europe amid the weekly warnings that Russia might attack NATO in 1-5 (or 20) years so I wrote about Nordic-Baltic preparedness.
Not everybody has been sitting on their hands for the past 2 years.
Finland has activated a war economy lite. The Baltic states have been busy jointly procuring air defence systems to establish the “Livonian air shield” and are working to reinforce their borders together in the “Baltic Defence Line”. Sweden is reaching 2% already this year.
The Nordic countries are using their NORDEFCO cooperation framework and the EU’s ASAP funding to increase ammunition production both for regional needs and for Ukraine. The Baltic states are doing the same. This is all happening already, not in 3 years.
Finland has quietly filled its wartime stockpiles and is activating some of the so-called “production reservation agreements” which means that companies produce at the armed forces’ request what is needed for logistics - basically wartime economy light
The Finnish Defence Forces (FDF) received extra money right in the spring of 2022 and started working on increasing stockpiles immediately, “luckily before many other European states woke up to the issue”, says the logistics chief - which means that the orders have been coming in
The analysis what is needed is based both on long-term assessments and the analysis of Ukraine’s ammunition consumption. Finland is already producing 5 times more heavy artillery munitions than pre-2022 but the capacity isn’t at max yet
Interesting discussion by @FRHoffmann1 & @liviuhorovitz about the likelihood of a NATO-Russia war.
Also in light of the recent BILD-leak of a German armed forces worst-case scenario (I assume as part of a wargame) dating such a contingency to as early as 2025, some thoughts:
While it’s hard to assess what exactly the Bundeswehr scenario included, as I haven’t seen the original document, it sounded quite similar to the classic fait accompli scenarios NATO has been wargaming in the past decade and that the tripwire posture was based on.
The situation has changed from Russia’s pov since Finland became NATO member. The long border creates a new dilemma to be considered when planning an attack on the Baltics. Even if Russia wouldn’t base its calculation on conventional force correlation, it can’t ignore it either
I don’t think it’s likely that we’re headed to a World War 3 that comes with a big (nuclear) bang. It’s more likely that we could see a cascading series and coincidence of wars in different parts of the world (rather world wars than a World War).
The effect would be, as we already see now: difficulty to focus attention and resources when too many things are happening at the same time.
Much will depend on the US ability to contain this development in the parts of the world where it has extended deterrence obligations.
And that ability, in turn, will depend on the political trajectory in the US, i.e. whether the commitment holds to stick to treaty obligations and other commitments to allies and partners. (See Trump 2.0)
Wow this is quite something in the promised land of strategic non-communication: Finnish security and intelligence service is giving a presser about Russian disturbance and influence attempts in Finland.
“Russia can endure the war, but it may not be able to endure the peace”
- aim of cyber- and other attacks not so much to cause real damage (partly because Finland has invested in resilience and is a hard target) but to sow fear
- Finland is not a prioritised object of Russian attention but Russia observes how 🇫🇮 NATO membership shapes
- the Kremlin presents its actions as reactions to Western “aggression” to domestic audiences, to obscure culpability
- “whoever is behind the pipeline damage, Russia profits from it most”
- all of this was to be expected