Introduction – April 11, 2022
First it needs to be understood why Russia is so opposed to many of its neighbours like Estonia and Latvia being part of the NATO military alliance. Now Finland wants to join them. This puts more pressure on Moscow as all three are effectively in Moscow’s backyard.
This will allow NATO to deploy troops and military hardware right on Moscow’s western flank. It would be like putting a Russian armoured division right on the Mexican border with the U.S.
It’s a day’s drive from Latvia to Moscow so NATO forces would almost literally breathing down the Kremlin’s neck. So that if the U.S. decided on a first strike, Russia would have little time to defend itself or, more importantly retaliate. Rendering the principle of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD), which has kept the world from nuclear conflict for decades, obsolete.
—
Finland preparing for Russian ‘consequences’ if it joins NATO: top MoD official
Aaron Hehta – Breaking Defense April 8, 2022
By all signs, Finland is heading towards a decision on joining the NATO alliance within the next few months, if not weeks. And in the process, a top Finnish defense official tells Breaking Defense, the country has to prepare for the reality of a furious, but unpredictable response from Moscow.
“Of course, Russia will react, but we don’t know how. And we need to be prepared” should Finland decide to join NATO, said Esa Pulkkinen, the permanent secretary at Finland’s Ministry of Defense. “We need to be ready, of course, to face consequences.”
NATO’s vaunted Article 5 protections do not kick in for aspirant members, only ratified ones. That means from the moment Finland — and perhaps its neighbor Sweden — declares the intention to join NATO until the moment every alliance member has ratified their ascension, there is no guarantee other nations will come to their aid in response to military action by Moscow.
Pulkkinen, a retired lieutenant general who now serves as the top civil servant in Finland’s defense ministry, is at the center of the question of how Finland could handle any potential Russian threat. Speaking to Breaking Defense this week in Washington, he acknowledged that Russia’s reaction is just one of many aspects that have to be weighed in the NATO discussion.
And while Pulkkinen downplayed the likelihood of Russia launching a second full invasion of a European country, he also said his country couldn’t afford to rule it out completely.
“You cannot rule out anything. I mean, that’s something that you need to do, assess the risks. You should not exclude anything. But that risk assessment, I think, is taking place in Finland now,” he said.
Already Russia has issued warnings, like in the first week of the Ukraine conflict when a top Russian spokesperson said that the Finland and Sweden joining NATO would have “serious military and political consequences, which would require our country to make response steps.” Russia’s invasions of Georgia in 2008 and Ukraine in 2014 were seen, in part, as a way to block those nations from moving to join the Western alliance. Which means any decision to join NATO could set up a perilous moment when Russia’s best strategic course, at least in Moscow’s eyes, might well be to attack.
I don’t think it makes MAD obsolete. I think it makes a Russian reaction more problematic, and more likely.
The last time Finland delt with the NATO question, they had a referendum, I believe, and the Finnish sheeple rejected NATO membership.
This time, no referendum, just orders from the State Department and threats of death to Finnish political leaders, because the CIA has an open policy to assassinate any Western European leader who goes off script.
I don’t know what the Russians will do, but I would nuke Helsinki. Russia has been all sweet and nice in UKraine, but now its time to take the gloves off.
Are the Finnish sheeple going to revolt? No, let them die in a radioactive stupor.
British people being ethnically cleansed from their own lands are finding safe harbour in Russia
as White anglo saxons are forced out by the newcomers brought in by a racist zenophobic heterophobic government are moving to Russia to re settle
sorry missed this off
https://russian-faith.com/people/we-came-to-russia-for-a-better-life-n6545
Putin send them a nuke on HELLsinki !
“After all, Zelensky spoke to Parliament last Friday and also mentioned the “spirit of Helsinki”. And this is the most alarming thing about Finnish foreign policy.”
Religion is at the root of it all.
Zelensky did not preach in parliament but he is, after all, a Netayahu (son of a Lithuanian rabbi who has said that the Talmud is sufficient as the political high priest of the country he leads), ‘apprentice’ and a man of the same liturgy. He too can be better understood by reading this article by Ron Unz on the curiosities of the Talmudic-Jewish religion:
American Pravda: Oddities of the Jewish Religion
The Surprising Elements of Talmudic Judaism
RON UNZ – JULY 16, 2018
https://www.unz.com/runz/american-pravda-oddities-of-the-jewish-religion/
I think the Orthodox have the best liturgy. The hypocrisy of the Protestants is overcome by the Talmud, where things are said bluntly, i.e. others are not tolerated at all and must be destroyed. And there is a big campaign of destruction going on.
Unz is well aware of this Talmudic liturgy as as a child he had to sit with his mother sometimes in a synagogue and marvel at what he thought were the ‘horrors of the crazed rabbis’. That is how he has described his experiences as a child. And that was enough for him. He did not become a Zionist or a Talmudist or a supporter of the ‘spirit of Helsinki’.
Such is the Ukrainian president the West admires:
“Ukraine’s current president promoted his election campaign with an ad that was shocking to say the least, in which he fired two submachine guns at members of parliament he considered corrupt or subservient to Russia.”
And Israel’s current prime minister has boasted how good an Arab killer he was and still is.
The supporters of neutrality and the nato-opposition in Finland fear the country is now in the ‘gray phase’ of war if the country seeks to admit or receive the Nato agreement
The grey phase, or preparatory phase, is a concept in modern warfare that describes the action immediately preceding a strategic strike. During the gray phase, enemy forces have arrived in the target country and are conducting sabotage and dissemination of disinformation. The grey phase also includes diplomatic and military pressure on the target country, which may be accompanied by border violations and other provocations.