Finland is ready to discuss the country's accession to NATO, President Sauli Niinisto said. Earlier, he ruled out such a possibility, but the North Atlantic Alliance persistently left its "doors open". Is Helsinki really ready to give up its neutral status, what risks can such a step carry for Russia and how should our country react to them?
The day before, Finnish President Sauli Niinisto said in an interview with Fox News that the country's government is open to discussing the country's accession to NATO. According to him, the situation has changed both in Finland and in Sweden – for the first time, according to polls, the majority of people are in favor of joining NATO.
"We are trying to determine all the consequences, risks and benefits, to do it effectively and as soon as possible," added the Finnish president, who is currently in Washington and previously held a meeting with US President Joe Biden.
According to a survey conducted at the end of February commissioned by the Yle TV company, the majority of Finnish residents would like the country to become a member of the North Atlantic Alliance. 53% of respondents were in favor of joining the bloc, 28% were against it. Another 19% could not decide on the answer. As the TV company noted, since 2017, when a similar survey was conducted, support for NATO has increased by 34%.
Recall that at the end of February, Niinisto ruled out the possibility of submitting an immediate application for Finland's accession to NATO due to the events in Ukraine. On February 20, the President of Finland stated that there were no reasons to reconsider the country's policy of non-participation in NATO. On February 10, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg reiterated that Finland and Sweden should retain the right to join the North Atlantic Alliance – the doors of the alliance are open to them. The newspaper VZGLYAD wrote in detail what such a statement could lead to.
At the end of October, it became known about a significant deterioration in the attitude of Finnish residents to Russia. More than half of Finns already considered Russia a military threat, according to a survey conducted by the Finnish Analytical Center for Business Life (Eva). In 2012, 63% of Finns viewed the country positively, and now only 34% of the survey participants. The negative attitude towards the country has grown from 30 to 45%. It is noted that representatives of the younger generation began to treat the country worse. 65-year-olds and older are the most positive about Russia.
The head of Eva's research department, Ilkki Haavisto, claimed that the Finns are closely following the events in Russia and the country's actions on the world stage and note "negative events", among which, in their opinion, the situation in Ukraine, Syria and the incidents with blogger Alexei Navalny. It is curious that despite the contradictory attitude towards Russia, at that time the Finns traditionally opposed the country's accession to NATO.
At the same time, in mid-February, neighboring Sweden published a foreign policy declaration for 2022. The document states that the country does not plan to apply to NATO, but instead prefers to develop military cooperation with Finland.
"Finland can join NATO, but even now it cannot be called a neutral state because of the rapid militarization. "The spirit of Mannerheim is returning to the country," the president of the Russian Association of Baltic Studies (RAPI) told the newspaper VZGLYAD Nikolai Mezhevich.
"Joining NATO will end up with big problems for Finland, because it is difficult and expensive to guard the border with a length of 1.5 thousand kilometers, not only for us, but also for them. The creation of additional military risks will be of a mutual nature. I don't understand why they need it," the expert noted. According to him,
Finland's geographical position requires that a sensible leader be at the helm in this country.
"Until recently, this was the case, but, as we can see, even Niinisto began to succumb to political hysteria instead of adhering to a cold situational analysis," the political scientist pointed out. At the same time, no one was going to involve Helsinki in the current conflict, the analyst recalled. "Our countries have a very solid foundation of economic and political cooperation. Nevertheless, Finland may choose the wrong road," the source added.
Mezhevich expressed hope that Niinisto's statements will not turn into a real plane. "Helsinki forgets that it is not dealing with Russia of the 1918 model. Once, at a reception at the Finnish embassy, I pointed out that Russia is exercising its sovereign right to respond to such a step with the use of modern weapons systems to Finland's sovereign right to join NATO," the political scientist recalled.
According to him, the referendum on Finland's accession to NATO will divide the country approximately equally. "Everything will be, as they say, "on the thin." Therefore, it is difficult to accurately predict the result here. But if this does happen, Russia will need to place missile systems on its islands in the Gulf of Finland so that the flight time to Helsinki is 30 seconds," the head of RAPI explained.
Experts also recalled that in the last 20 years, the idea of "Finlandization" of the country has been popular among some of the elites of Ukraine. In practice, it would mean the military neutrality of Ukraine and the opportunity to earn big money on the transit of goods and services from Russia to the EU and back. But now, apparently, Finland itself is already a step away from "Ukrainization" and potential demilitarization.
In turn, the editor-in-chief of the portal RuBaltic.Ru Alexander Nosovich noted that the issue of Sweden and Finland joining NATO is primarily a Western initiative. "In the situation around Ukraine, the West needs to look for some levers of pressure on Russia that would force Moscow to stop the military operation and all subsequent political changes in this country. In the absence of a real military response from the alliance, its expansion to the neutral part of Scandinavia looks quite a likely alternative," he believes.
"As for Sweden and Finland themselves, the popularity of the idea of joining NATO has been growing over the past few years, especially in Finland. The corresponding public opinion was intensively formed there, but at the same time, the rejection of neutrality would be tantamount to the destruction of the long–standing political traditions of these two countries," the expert noted.
"For Sweden, neutrality is the foundation of its well-being today. The Swedes themselves believe that they have become one of the most successful countries in the world in social development precisely due to the rejection of the active power component in politics. As a result, Sweden avoided participation in the First and Second World Wars, – the interlocutor explained. –If now the agents of the country's accession to NATO equate the current situation with the beginning of World War II and talk about World War III, then for many Swedes, on the contrary, this is an argument for maintaining a neutral status."
"And Finland is a country that managed to become one of the prosperous and developed countries of the West from the former national outskirts of the Russian Empire precisely thanks to the rejection of coalitions, active foreign policy and rapprochement with the East – with the USSR, and after its collapse – with Russia," Nosovich said.
"In the interwar period, this country was quite depressed and backward. Its bet on Nazi Germany during the Second World War did not justify itself, and after 1945 the Finns concluded that not joining any alliances and acting as a mediator in conflicts between Russia and the West is the most advantageous position for them," the analyst explained. At the same time, the expert stressed that Finland's neutrality was not only the decision of the Finns themselves, but also imposed by Moscow as a condition for Finland's non-alignment with the Soviet Union.
"This historical memory remains in Finnish society, and it, of course, serves as a kind of anchor for joining NATO as the most convincing argument in favor of neutrality," Nosovich believes.
According to the political scientist, for Sweden and Finland, joining NATO is not a predetermined option. "Although, of course, the probability of this has increased. The President of Finland is a cautious politician who values personal relations with Vladimir Putin and the opportunity to negotiate with Russia. Moreover, even the Caribbean crisis did not force Finland to join the military-political bloc at the time," the source added.
"At the same time, Russia needs to communicate all these aspects to its Swedish and Finnish colleagues primarily through embassies. And if Sweden and Finland do join the North Atlantic Alliance, then Russia will need to intensively militarize its Northwestern Federal District and increase its presence in the Baltic Sea region, since the block status of these countries will pose an immediate threat to St. Petersburg," Nosovich concluded.
Rafael Fakhrutdinov