Russia is threatening NATO-member Finland with a coordinated information campaign that mirrors the exact playbook the Kremlin used to justify its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
It comes as NATO scrambled alliance duty warplanes to repel three Russian military jets which violated Estonia’s airspace amid an increasingly tense atmosphere on the alliance’s eastern flank.
The latest incursion follows Moscow’s unprecedented intrusion into both Polish and Romanian airspace in the space of just a few days, triggering condemnation from NATO and a new resolve to stand up to the dictator.
Several senior Kremlin figures have been making verbal attacks against Finland in recent days, disparaging the northern European nation as if to lay the groundwork for an offensive, the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) has warned.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov claimed on September 18 that the Finnish government’s ‘neutral veneer peeled off’ and that revanchism is ‘literally on the rise’.
Sergei Ivanov, special presidential envoy for the environment and transport, said Russian-Finnish relations ‘practically do not exist’ and are unlikely to improve given the fact that Finland is a NATO member and is ‘actively calling for strengthening [its] eastern border’.
The Finnish government is planning on flooding its borders to transform them into defensive swampland, making it impossible for Russian tanks to attack as any advance would be prevented by their heavy vehicles sinking into swampland.
Poland is also considering the measure, which proved crucial in Ukraine when the military deliberately flooded 2,800 hectares of land in a desperate attempt to stave off the Russian troops advancing towards Kyiv at the beginning of the war.
Finland joined the defensive Western alliance NATO in April 2023 after Putin triggered the biggest war on the European continent since World War Two. The nation also faced invasion from the Soviet Union in 1939.
In further denigrating comments, Ivanov said the Finnish population was unsatisfied with the government’s performance, and claimed the lack of Russian tourism had led to depopulation and a faltering economy in southeastern Finland.
His sentiment was echoed by the deputy chairman of the State Duma Committee on International Affairs, Alexei Chepa, who blamed Finland’s NATO membership for why Russians have stopped buying property and visiting the Nordic country.
The fact that the Kremlin newswire TASS and other Russian state media outlets echoed the comments of the senior politicians suggests their messages are part of a top-down Kremlin-coordinated campaign to delegitimise Finland.
Disturbingly, the rhetoric used by the ministers directly mirrors the Kremlin’s dubious justifications used to preempt its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the ISW warned.
The verbal attacks follow the president of Finland’s warm welcoming of NATO’s new ‘Eastern Sentry’ mission to reinforce its eastern flank following mounting aggression from Russia.
NATO member Estonia said on Friday the three MiG-31 fighter jets entered its airspace without permission and stayed there for a total of 12 minutes.
Alliance duty warplanes – Italian F-35s – were scrambled to repel the Russian war planes.
‘Russia has violated Estonian airspace four times already this year, which is unacceptable in itself, but today’s violation, during which three fighter jets entered our airspace, is unprecedentedly brazen,’ said Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna.
‘Russia’s ever-increasing testing of borders and aggressiveness must be responded to by rapidly strengthening political and economic pressure.’
Estonia said it had made a protest to the top Russian diplomat in the country.
A staunch supporter of Ukraine, Tallinn said in May that Moscow had briefly sent a fighter jet into NATO airspace over the Baltic Sea during an attempt to stop a Russian-bound oil tanker thought to be part of a ‘shadow fleet’ defying Western sanctions on Moscow.
According to domestic media, the war planes lacked two-way radio communication with Estonian air traffic control and had no flight plans.
So far, the ‘Eastern Sentry’ operation includes the deployment of two F-16 fighter jets and a frigate from Denmark, three Rafale fighter jets from France and four Eurofighter jets from Germany.
‘We’re very happy that the Eastern Sentry now begins in Polish airspace. We take lessons learned from there and then expand it all the way up to the high North,’ Finnish President Alexander Stubb said in a press conference this week with his Latvian counterpart.
Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania have also been fortifying their borders, adding obstacles and redoubts to existing fences in response to fears about a potential World War III triggered by Putin’s military ambitions.
When complete, the Baltic defence line is estimated to be more than 940 miles long and will limit Russia’s ability to launch attacks from its own territory, Kaliningrad and Belarus.
Between 19 and 23 drones entered Polish airspace on September 9 in an unprecedented intrusion of the country’s territory, with NATO scrambling a multinational force of jets to shoot several down.
In the wake of the incursion, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk warned that the West is at its closest to open conflict since World War Two
Romania then accused Russia of breaching its airspace on September 13, as Latvia reported a drone crashing in its east.
On Monday, Poland said a civilian drone flew over its presidential palace and government buildings, describing the incident as another ‘provocation’. A Belarusian and a Ukrainian were arrested.
Meanwhile, Putin has put NATO further on edge by conducting war games with Belarus as part of the Zapad 2025 drills, which have historically been used to test different military strategies ahead of invasions.
Long a staunch Russian ally, President Alexander Lukashenko allowed Moscow to use Belarus to send tens of thousands of troops into Ukraine in February 2022, and has since allowed Russia to station tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus.
The exercises, which began on September 12 and concluded on Wednesday, unnerved neighbouring countries, with Poland temporarily closing its border with Belarus and deploying some 40,000 troops there in anticipation of hostility.
In Finland, there are some obvious locations that could be considered for restoring the nation’s swampland as a defensive measure, such as swathes of land drained for forestry that failed to grow any trees.
Peatlands are unique ecosystems that naturally store large amounts of carbon dioxide. But if drained, they exude centuries’ worth of carbon into the atmosphere, contributing towards global warming.
That’s why the bloc is prioritising restoring 30 percent of degraded peatlands over the next five years, and 50 percent by 2050 – to slow climate change, promote biodiversity, and now, ready border nations for potential war.
