As a Finn I say this is fine. Every military resource that is tied down and not raping and destroying Ukraine is net positive.
Finland is NATO. He’ll NEVER invade Finland. Have fun dividing up your oh so great, properly trained and well equipped army haha! Not like he’ll need the troops in Ukraine, that war is going as smooth AF.
I feel like he’s doing this just to threaten the troops on the front line with somewhere colder
Loads of forest up north. I’d prefer a camp fire over gunfire. Just make sure to bring your own axe.
Finns camp in such conditions voluntarily. Russians probably do too, lol. In fact, many Russians in that particular area of Russia are a lot more like Finns than they are like Russians. In fact, they are being repressed, and their language and culture is being systematically erased. If we are playing by Russian rules, this means Finland just has to step in, to uphold the human rights of the Finnic peoples living in this area.
I get your point. However, within a military it’s not like you’re stationed where you are originally from. So, most military left right now are the minorities from the east, or at least, they are drafted and sent to the front an mass. Except maybe for the officers not going to the front. But then again, they aren’t stationed where they are from, but where the regime requires them to be. I bet the minorities living in Russia close to Finland won’t feel much support for the regime, unless they too are too much brainwashed by the propaganda. But in general, the minorities often prefer to separate from Russia completely.
I’ve been making the same argument about the Han population of the Vladivostok Oblast for a while now. Xi actually has a lot to gain there, and no one outside of Russia would bat an eye.
etuomaala
Wow, I can’t believe you’re making me root for a Chinese invasion of Vladivostok. You know what though? At this point, fuck it. Go right ahead, Xi.
Karelia is the region of Russia close to Finland. And these people are technically Karelians (and I’m ethnically part Karelian as my father is Karelian). Karelian historically forcefully were assimilated either into what is Finland or Russian Federation today. Karelian culture is near extinct.
We all better pray you’re right. If he does end up trying to invade Finland, it’ll be a global f*ckup
Can you expand?
Russia clashing with multiple nuclear powers. What could go wrong?
They’ve been held at bay for over a year by a smaller army with at best 20+ year old “B stock” conventional munitions often Jerry rigged to give half the capabilities they have when used as intended. Russia is a paper tiger who would get the Iraq revolutionary guards treatment inside 3 weeks if they start shit against the finns. And nobody outside Putin himself is suicidal enough to start throwing nukes.
You’re assuming Russia is going to be a rational actor, and that there are enough checks and balances to keep Putin from using nukes.
What is this, non credible defense? If you believe that, then nothing matters and all options are on the table including preemptive action, because you either assume that MAD is enough to stave off that stupidity or you dont. But…this is all bullshit propaganda and saber rattling so who really cares.
The idea is to set the strategic position such that your opponent knows that any war would be a failure, and therefore they never try it at all. Finland joining NATO is pretty much that.
This is a dangerous assumption when it comes to nukes, though. Not because it doesn’t work on its own, but because small mistakes have disastrous consequences for the entire planet. Works better for conventional warfare.
The claim is that it would be a global fuck up, maybe implying that it wouldn’t be limited to Russia/nato. Not that this wouldn’t be messy in and of itself, if Russia were to invade, I suspect they would be left out on their own by everyone else. They’re already struggling with Ukraine. I doubt anyone is going to want to step up and help them against NATO. They would probably lose a lot of the external but indirect support they are getting right now because countries would be hesitant to support a country against the us.
If it’s just “war is bad” then yeah, kind of a duh statement.
Hopefully everybody else would be sensible and nobody would take Russia’s side. Hopefully Russia wouldn’t randomly nuke other countries in their death throes.
But even if both of those things turn out fine the economic fallout (and other kinds of fallout if it goes nuclear) will be a global problem.
According to the Russian president, Finland was “dragged” into Nato.
And who did the dragging Vlady?
Exactly. Most didn’t want to join before Putin decided to invade Ukraine.
Putin managed to do what decades and decades of pro-NATO propaganda couldn’t. It’s almost impressive.
Forget article 5, if Russia thinks that Ukrainians are tough mothers, they (literally) won’t know what hit them in Finland.
Thick, dense forests with millions of trees. Moutainous regions. Snow forever. Lots of places a sniper pair could hide.
Wake up, Simo Hayha. Finland needs its protector once more.
They probably forgot about the Winter War.
And a thirst for death that would make even the most hardcore Peshmerga blush.
Even forget about snipers, Finland have one of the best artillery in Europe and a geography that’s almost made for creating bottlenecks for invaders
>Be Putin
>Announce NATO expansion is no threat
>Pull most troops from the Finnish border, because holy fuck, Ukraine has turned the entire army you had at the start into sunflower fertalizer
>Have all the units you pulled from the Finnish border incur astronomical losses, because you want to present any win at the next election
>Declare Finland a threat again
>Move the broken units back up to the border
>ProfitI don’t think they even bother with elections. Russia is dictatorship not a democracy
They go through the motions, but yeah, it’s definitely all theater.
Is Putin really that weak domestically to care about elections?
No.
Let me guess, another “training exercise”?
Did they forget that Finland created Simo Heyha?
I was worried about this ever since Putin said “we have no plans of the sort” when Biden said Putin would invade a NATO country after Ukraine.
Lo and behold, troop build up on a border of a NATO country, which completely parallels the start of the Ukraine invasion.
I highly doubt those troops are for invading Finland. If there’s any NATO country that should be worried it’s probably Estonia. Especially if/when Trump gets elected president again.
Except of course for the little fact that Ukraine wasn’t in NATO.
People outside of Finland might forget that before Russia attacked Ukraine, they had several military bases around Finland, with plenty of troops in them. https://www.is.fi/ulkomaat/art-2000000728599.html from 2014 (in Finnish, sorry). For the Ukraine war, they emptied these bases. What they’re doing now is just restoring those bases to what the had been for several decades.
Putin is just plain lying, as he is every time his mouth moves. They have maintained a highly threatening stance against Finland ever since WW2.
Yeah, with Ukraine it was “routine training exercises”.
I guess this is classic troop rotation shenanigans?
Instead of rotating towards areas near Moscow, rotating towards St. Petersburg gives soldiers a break/training while pressuring Finland.
What pressuring? They’re scared to shit to point of hallucinating threats because they think because we have a prime-eval grudge against them.
If they magically would co-operate with us, drop their shit we would more than happy resume the trade with them.
Finland’s blank NATO papers were kept in a safe (30 years figuratively?) and as soon as the war(s) started to cause us harm, they were pulled out of the safe and ratified.
From the news at the time of NATO ratification: “Look in the mirror” - Sauli Niinistö
From the news of the last two weeks: Now the eastern border is pretty much closed for the foreseeable future.
My armchair stance: If the Soviets angered nearly 4 million Finns in the 1940s who had only pitchforks and cows and the result was 126 875 dead and 188 671 wounded Soviets. [*](https://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talvisota) Now there is a nation of +5 600 000 grumpy Finns with access to modern weaponry and a bitter memories of the past…
I don’t know what the russian leaders are hallucinating trying to anger us more? :P
There are no Russian leaders left with memory of the 1940s.
Our sorrow of the year is the death of Martti Ahtisaari, a Peace Nobelist. May his legacy to be respected in honor, his wisdom would be in great need as of today.
Sauli Niinistö, who will soon peacefully leave us as a president and join the same history books. Sad we can’t have a another Kekkonen, depends who you ask. I hope the next president will have a stone cool head in this heated world.:)
Moving to open a second front. In the winter. At the home of the White Death. Surely nothing can possibly go wrong with this plan.
Russia will absolutely not invade Finland, even if it weren’t part of NATO and the EU.
Correct. You have to be utterly delusional to think otherwise. This is just Putin posturing for domestic consumption.
That’s what I thought about the threats to invade Ukraine. It was such a stupid idea that surely someone as intelligent as Putin wouldn’t do it. But then he did. We can no longer assume he’ll act rationally.
That doesn’t mean he is going to invade, but it does mean we need to take his threat seriously.
Which is great news for the Russian soldiers who are going to be stationed there. Not going to the meat grinder instead.
You’re probably right, but that was exactly what people were commenting while russian troops were officially still just doing an exercise near the Ukrainian border. Putin is a madman and capable of unexpected crazy behaviour
Well no actually. US intelligence was basically telling the entire world that the invasion was 100 percent going to happen. How do you not remember that?
I don’t because idk who they told it to. Not me (I was just concerned it would happen by myself) and obviosly not the many people who were still commenting it would never happen while russian soldiers had already been reported crossing the Ukrainian border
Didn’t they do that twice?
Only once that I know of, and that was arguably a stalemate even though the USSR took part of Karelia. The Finns also learned their lesson there, and today (enormous network of bunkers, largest artillery force in Europe, F-35s on order, military reserve is 20% of the population) they are ready.
Plus, of course, they are EU members (which has a mutual defense clause) and NATO (whose Article 5 is well-known)
Only once that I know of
It was like one war with a pause in the middle of it rather than two distinct conflicts.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter_War
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuation_War
it’s just a sneaky little recruitment campaign… sign up now boys, we’re forming a nice leisurely unit to sit and watch the Finns do nothing… don’t worry, we won’t accidentally send you to die like worms in a ditch in Ukraine…
Can’t imagine they have too many spare units to locate there…
great. less at ukraine.
First target: grain exporters Second target: phone exporters Third target: tourism exporters? Wood exporters? Weapon exporters? Ouch!
