On the menu today: The ministries of foreign affairs of NATO’s Eastern flank countries — Poland, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania — want Americans to know that no matter what they may have heard about some other NATO members (COUGH Spain COUGH), they are staunch and steadfast American allies, and are eager to demonstrate their contributions to protecting both continental Europe and American interests. So, the foreign ministries have invited a group of American journalists to see how their national security, defense, cybersecurity, border patrol, and other joint efforts work. My journey begins in Helsinki, and if you’re reading this, it’s a sign that Russia’s habitual jamming of GPS signals over the Baltic Sea did not deter my flights to get here.
Why Finland Matters
Helsinki, Finland — Finland does not get mentioned in American pop culture all that often, and when it does, it’s usually as a punchline: It’s cold, they eat fish, and they invented Angry Birds.
Finland officially became NATO’s newest member on April 4, 2023, becoming the 31st member of the alliance, about one month after neighboring Sweden joined.
One of the so-called “justifications” for Vladimir Putin’s utterly unjustifiable full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 was that he didn’t want NATO expanding to his borders. Not counting Kaliningrad, that stretch of Russian territory between Poland and Lithuania on the Baltic Sea, at the start of 2022, Russia had 446 miles of shared border with NATO members Norway, Estonia, and Latvia.
Finland shares 883 miles of border with Russia, so now that Finland is in NATO, Russia has 1,279 miles of shared border with NATO members, almost three times as much as before the invasion. It is a beautiful thing to see military territorial aggression backfire so thoroughly.
Considering Finland’s long and tense history with Russia, some might have expected the country to end up in the NATO alliance sooner. Once a territory of Sweden, then of Russia, Finland declared its independence in 1917. In August 1939, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union signed the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, which relegated Finland to a Soviet sphere of influence. By November, Finland and the Soviets were fighting the three-month Winter War; this was when Finnish sniper Simo Häyhä, nicknamed the “White Death,” believed to have killed more than 500 enemy soldiers during the conflict, the highest number of sniper kills in any major war, and considered one of the deadliest snipers in history. (I suspect he is the only Finn to be featured in a video of the YouTube series Epic Rap Battles of History, taking on the Red Baron.) Finland resisted bravely against overwhelming Russian forces, but at the war’s end it was forced to cede about 9 percent of its territory. In June 1941, Finland and the Soviet Union returned to conflict in the Continuation War, with Finland a cobelligerent of Nazi Germany.
Finland argued that it was fighting a parallel but separate “continuation war” against the Soviet Union and had no formal treaty of alliance with Germany. While the U.S. ended diplomatic relations for a period, it never declared war against Finland.
When World War II ended, Finland retained its independence, but Soviet troops remained at its doorstep. In 1948, the Finnish government announced the “Treaty of Friendship,” declaring that Finland was committed to staying out of international conflicts between the great powers and limiting Finnish defense cooperation with third parties. “Finlandization” became a term to describe a state of technical independence and sovereignty, but heavy influence by the Kremlin.
The Finns’ preferred public stance of neutrality remained after the Cold War ended, and if not for the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Finland might have remained a “NATO partner,” but not a member. In January 2022, public opinion polling found 30 percent of Finns supported Finland applying for NATO membership. Forty-three percent of respondents opposed applying for membership, and 27 percent were unsure of their position. About one month later, Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began, and by April, 68 percent of Finns supported applying for NATO membership.
You may have noticed that the Russian “special military operation” that was supposed to last four days has now lasted more than four years, the Russian military couldn’t spare any tanks for the Victory Day parades in Red Square this year, and a new estimate calculates that about 352,000 Russian soldiers have died in the war against Ukraine through the end of 2025. That is about six times the American in-theater deaths in the Vietnam War. Throw in the wounded and missing, and the Russian military has lost an estimated 1.4 million men.
You might think that the colossal casualties of the war would mitigate the military risk to Finland and other countries on NATO’s Eastern flank. Only somewhat, according to the Bloomsbury Intelligence and Security Institute, a security think tank in the United Kingdom:
In recent years, Russia has engaged in notable acts of military activity near the Finnish border. Yle, a Finnish broadcaster, has revealed that a garrison is being built in Petrozavodsk, Karelia, enabling a significant expansion of Russian troops. Around 15,000 troops are expected to be based in Karelia, up from around 3,000. This follows the installation of a new artillery brigade in Kandalaksha, Murmansk in June 2025, underscoring Russia’s intention to consolidate its prowess in northern Europe. When Russia’s military reforms are completed, an estimated 80,000 troops will be stationed in the vicinity of Finland. This, however, is unlikely to take place until after the end of the Ukraine war due to the lack of manpower and equipment.
And Russia loves its “gray zone” tactics all over Europe. Besides the GPS jamming I mentioned above, Russia engages in undersea cable sabotage in the Baltic Sea, arson, espionage, cyberattacks and cyberespionage, and disinformation efforts. (I suspect I’ll be learning, and you’ll be reading, more about these operations in the coming days.)
The Russian war against Ukraine is fought on the ground well south of here, but some aspects of the war are literally on Finland’s doorstep, or in its airspace. You’ve probably heard about Ukraine’s long-range drone strikes deep within Russian territory that prompted unprecedented security measures in Moscow for the Victory Day parade. The Ukrainian drones that are hitting targets in and around Saint Petersburg sometimes come close to, or even enter, Finnish airspace. Back on May 5:
Finland’s Defense Minister Antti Häkkänen has condemned the two military drones that strayed into Finnish territory over the weekend.
As the incident over the Gulf of Finland unfolded on Sunday morning, Ukraine was carrying out a drone attack on Russia’s oil port Primorsk, roughly 50km from the Finnish border.
“We will not allow this. They must plan their operations so that the risk of deviations due to Russian interference is minimized, so that something like this cannot happen,” Häkkänen said.
The minister noted that he was ‘immediately’ informed about the situation on Sunday morning. He said Finnish Air Force Hornet fighter jets and Army helicopters were sent to track the drones. . . .
Prime Minister Petteri Orpo (NCP) held bilateral talks with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky over the weekend. Orpo said he spoke with Zelensky about Sunday’s incident, adding that following their talks, Ukraine would be more cautious about preventing drones from straying into Finnish territory. . . .
The Finnish Defence Forces (FDF) said a decision was made not to intercept or shoot down the drones because they were too close to the Russian border.
In April, Ukrainian drones hit the Russian oil terminal at Ust-Luga and the port of Primorsk; roughly 42 percent of Russia’s oil flows through those two terminals. With those terminals operations seriously hindered, ships in Russia’s “shadow fleet” are backed up waiting to pick up their oil shipments off the coast of Finland. “Between 30 and 40 shadow fleet tankers are clustered around unofficial anchorage points in Russian waters, as well as the 6-nautical-mile-wide strip of international waters between Finland and Estonia. . . . These outdated craft, staffed by inexperienced crews, are more prone to structural failures, including oil leaks.”
Besides the usual gray zone harassment tactics, the Russians have weaponized illegal immigration against neighboring states. Since August 2023, more than 1,300 third-country nationals, from countries such as Syria and Somalia, have arrived in Finland from Russia without a visa. The Finnish government declared, “It was clear that foreign authorities or other actors were facilitating instrumentalized migration.” The Finns responded by closing all border posts indefinitely, and since then, they have built . . . well, you might call it a “Big Beautiful Wall.” A year ago, the Finnish Border Guard completed the first 22 miles of 15-foot-high fence on its closed eastern border with Russia.
(For those inclined to accuse the Finns of hypocrisy, I have not found any instances of Finnish government officials specifically criticizing Trump’s “big, beautiful wall” proposal for the U.S. southern border.)
I can hear somebody out there saying, “Why should Americans care about any of this? It’s not like Russia is shipping illegal immigrants to cross our border.” Actually, Russian-speaking organized crime organizations did help dramatically increase the number of Russians attempting to sneak across the U.S. border during the Biden administration.
In 2023, former FSB director and Security Council secretary Nikolai Patrushev traveled to Cuba and Latin America and spoke approvingly of our southern neighbors regaining control of territory in the Southwestern United States allegedly stolen from Mexico, describing the United States as “a patchwork quilt that can easily come apart at the seams.”
The Russian people can be wonderful, but if you’re an American, the Russian state hates your guts.
To prepare for this trip, I’ve been reading the new book from former CIA senior operations officer Sean Wiswesser, Tradecraft, Tactics and Dirty Tricks: Russian Intelligence and Putin’s Secret War:
For the RIS [Russian Intelligence Services], the United States is the number one enemy, or as the Russians say, glavnii protivnik or “GP” (in Russian, pronounced geh-peh). Early in my career, in the so-called post-Cold War years, when experts in the West speculated about whether the superpower conflict would continue, I asked a Russian intelligence officer why we are still the GP. After all, there were new threats, terrorism was on the rise, and through all of it, why would America still be the GP? His answer was revealing: “You are the GP, the U.S. was the GP, is the GP, and always will be the main enemy of Russia. Forget about the other threats; America comes first for us [the RIS].”
There is no amount of diplomatic outreach that is going to change this mentality within the Russian government, and certainly not in between Putin’s ears. It doesn’t matter if we have U.S. servicemen in uniform on their hands and knees, rolling out the red carpet for Putin in Alaska. The Russian state sees the United States and its allies as an enemy that must be undermined and harassed at every opportunity. Even today, Russia is shipping drone components to Iran via the Caspian Sea, helping the mullahs rebuild their arsenal and continue strikes against targets in the Persian Gulf.
I hope our policymakers see that fact with clear eyes and sharp minds.
ADDENDUM: Okay, Axios, that’s a good headline: “Gavin Newsom’s Heir Problem.”