![]() Jarmo Lindberg, Finland’s former chief of defence, says that the Finnish capital Helsinki “is like Swiss cheese” with dozens of kilometres of tunnels. It carried on with conscription for all male school-leavers even after the end of the cold war, when many countries in Europe stopped, and Helsinki has maintained strong defence spending even as others cut in the 1990s and 2000s. He points to opinion polls suggesting about three-quarters of Finns are willing to fight for their country, by far the highest figure in Europe.įinland has a wartime troop strength of about 280,000 people while in total it has 900,000 trained as reservists. That is why we have been very careful in maintaining our resilience,” says president Sauli Niinisto. “We have had hard experiences in history many times. Rebuilding after this conflict, Finns vowed: never again. ![]() In 1939-40, Finns fought in the brutal Winter War to hold off the Soviet Union, but lost a large chunk of their territory as a result, including their most cosmopolitan city, Vyborg, and one of their main areas of industry. Much of Finland’s preparedness stems from its own war with Moscow, which has echoes on the invasion of Ukraine. “The end result is you can turn this society into crisis mode if needs be.” The Winter War legacy “Given our geostrategic location, and our large land mass and sparse population, we need to have everything to defend the country . . . We train on many levels regularly to make sure everybody knows what to do - the political decision-making, what do the banks do, the church does, industry does, what is media’s role,” says Janne Kuusela, director-general for defence policy at the defence ministry. ![]() For the first time in its history, a majority of Finns now support applying for Nato membership.īut the country of 5.5mn people also sees the urgency of maintaining and upgrading its national strategy. The prospect of joining the Nato military alliance is now being discussed by Finnish leaders, as countries across Europe reassess their levels of co-operation on defence and security. The war in Ukraine has underscored how exposed Finland, with its 1,340km border with Russia, is to attack. ![]()
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