Robert Peston Robert Peston

Putin’s war is pushing Finland towards Nato

A Finnish F-18 Hornet flies over the Arctic Circle (Getty images)

There is important precedent for a small, determined, patriotic army saving a nation from falling under the sway of Russia. And that precedent is the 105-day Winter War in 1939-40 between Finland and the Soviet Union, the precursor to Vladimir Putin’s Russia.

The courage of the Finns inflicted huge losses on their fearsome adversary, as the Ukrainian army is doing today. Helsinki eventually sacrificed 10% of Finland’s territory to the Soviets, in return for a peace that has endured since the end of World War Two.

To learn the lessons, I travelled to Finland for On Assignment in the days around the anniversary of the end of the Winter War on 13 March. I also wanted to know whether and how this Baltic nation – which shares an 830-mile border with Russia – is adapting to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

That policy of uneasily trying to placate Moscow now feels inadequate to a majority of Finns

What struck me, in all my interviews, is how the Finns unlike British people  see their national independence as a precious but fragile right, that they do not in any sense take for granted. One manifestation is that 80 per cent of all Finnish men do their military service in the army, and well over a million of them remain part of an army of reservists.

Marko, a paunchy reserve soldier with grown-up children who I met on a snowy shooting range  where he was practising his marksmanship, as he does every weekend  summed up the importance of being in a permanent state of readiness for invasion: ‘A strong army is important because, if there’s an empty place and weak army, there’s a risk someone will come and fill in that empty place.’

There’s a nuance here. Which is that for most of its modern history, Finland has chosen not to provoke the great Russian bear to its east, first by classifying itself since 1945 as a neutral nation, and then – after it joined the European Union in 1995 – as ‘non aligned’.

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Robert Peston
Written by
Robert Peston
Robert Peston is Political Editor of ITV News and host of the weekly political discussion show Peston. His articles originally appeared on his ITV News blog.

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