Finland Joins NATO - Russia is Worried

[Occams Barber]

Finland Joins NATO – Russia is Worried

Russia has vowed to "strengthen its military potential" along its border with Finland as a direct response to Finland’s accension to the NATO ranks on Tuesday (4 April)

“In the event that forces and assets of other NATO members are deployed in Finland, we will take additional steps to reliably ensure Russia's military security," Mr Grushko (Russian Deputy Foreign Minister) said.

Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu said last year that Russia was taking "adequate countermeasures" and would form 12 units and divisions in its western military district.

The border between Finland and Russia is the longest Russia shares with a European country - some 1,340km (830 miles) long.

Alarmed by Russia's invasion of Ukraine a year ago, Finland abandoned its decades-long policy of non-alignment and applied to join the alliance. Finland will become the sixth NATO nation to share a border with Russia, joining Norway, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania and Poland. ( Sweden has also applied to join NATO- OB).

Russia to respond to Finland's NATO ascension by 'strengthening' military on border - ABC News

MAPS

1. To make things a little clearer I’ve included a map below showing the significant border change between Russia and European NATO countries now Finland has joined NATO.
2. The second map shows the NATO countries in Europe (dark blue) with Finland and Sweden in light blue. Sweden is expected to be admitted to NATO later this year.

1.

2.

 

[mindlight]

This is a major defeat for Putin. The point of the war was to restore Russian hegemony over the region not to weaken it.

 

[USincognito]

What's he going to do? Send more poorly equipped and fed conscripts to freeze to death in Karelia?

 

[mindlight]

What's he going to do? Send more poorly equipped and fed conscripts to freeze to death in Karelia?

No, he does not have the manpower and is shedding troops like crazy in Ukraine. Also, Putin knows that NATO will never attack him. His best policy is to play this down and just say that Russia will only react if Finland and now NATO start threatening Russian interests in the area. Since this will never happen and he has not got the resources to react anyway this will mainly be a game of smoke and mirrors

 

[USincognito]

No, he does not have the manpower and is shedding troops like crazy in Ukraine. Also, Putin knows that NATO will never attack him. His best policy is to play this down and just say that Russia will only react if Finland and now NATO start threatening Russian interests in the area. Since this will never happen and he has not got the resources to react anyway this will mainly be a game of smoke and mirrors

That was the point I was trying to make with subtlety. The back of the Russian army is broken and it's only going to get worse if they continue the invasion. The U.S. lost 55,000 dead in 10 years of involvement in Vietnam. Russia has probably lost 100,000 dead and it could be as high as 200,000. They can't really do anything other than rattle their Cossack sabre.

 

[Occams Barber]

It's also a nett strategic loss for Russia.

Both Russia and NATO will have an extra 1300 km of common border to defend.

Russia will have to find additional military capability (three geriatric pensioners and a sharpened broomstick?) to defend the border.

NATO, on the other hand, will gain Finnish military forces, which are significant as a direct result of the past threats from Russia.

OB

 

[mindlight]

That was the point I was trying to make with subtlety. The back of the Russian army is broken and it's only going to get worse if they continue the invasion. The U.S. lost 55,000 dead in 10 years of involvement in Vietnam. Russia has probably lost 100,000 dead and it could be as high as 200,000. They can't really do anything other than rattle their Cossack sabre.

It is interesting to me that this invasion coincides with the withdrawal from Afghanistan. The Americans successfully occupied the place for twenty years and then decided that it was no longer worth it strategically and withdrew. This was interpreted as a victory for ne'er do wells around the world but now Putin does the same except with no mandate, insufficient military resources and on the back of some really bad military intelligence. So America lost only about 2500 men in the country over two decades while Russia looks set to lose in the hundreds of thousands range. This is not just about numbers it is also about a lack of resources to make things happen. The poor discipline of the Russian army, the way their organized, their logistics and care of the wounded are all substandard. Maybe Finland could defeat them by itself even without NATO, they have done it before. But they have NATO behind them now also.

 

[mindlight]

It's also a nett strategic loss for Russia.

Both Russia and NATO will have an extra 1300 km of common border to defend.

Russia will have to find additional military capability (three geriatric pensioners and a sharpened broomstick?) to defend the border.

NATO, on the other hand, will gain Finnish military forces, which are significant as a direct result of the past threats from Russia.

OB

I guess Russian fleet operations from Murmansk and indeed St Petersburg are now also much more transparent and vulnerable. In the event of a war (May God forbid) they would lose almost all their assets in the Baltic and Artic oceans in a matter of minutes. So only stuff already parked in some deep ocean would be useable for nuclear strikes. That is still a formidable threat and not one to provoke but the net effect of a Russian strike might have declined from an extinction-level event to merely catastrophic.

Conventionally their situation is completely untenable for war now with NATO with indefensible borders and the loss of a considerable amount of useable geographical depth. Had Putin made the Carpathians in his initial strike on Ukraine the situation might have turned out very differently

 

[disciple Clint]

What's he going to do? Send more poorly equipped and fed conscripts to freeze to death in Karelia?

He has turned to China for help, now we need to be very concerned about exactly what help China is willing to provide and what they expect to get in return. Biden continues to create new problems for himself by dealing from a position of weakness.

 

[mindlight]

He has turned to China for help, now we need to be very concerned about exactly what help China is willing to provide and what they expect to get in return. Biden continues to create new problems for himself by dealing from a position of weakness.

China wants Taiwan and the international prestige of being the peacemaker in the current crisis, thus displacing the US-led hegemony. But the relationship between Russia and China is not a completely open one and both sides distrust each other. It is a marriage of convenience motivated by a shared distaste for a unipolar world revolving around the USA and its Western allies.

China's economy suffered during the Pandemic shut down and now it has a covid crisis also to deal with. It cannot afford the sanctions that would come from obvious military support but it has upped its intake of cheap raw materials and energy from Russia and it now sells them some useful technology also. Despite this increase, it is still heavily dependent on oil shipped from the Middle East and its silk road infrastructure across Asia is not complete. Thus its ambitions for Taiwan would probably bring an economic crisis it is not prepared for if it went ahead with the invasion.

If anything Russia's experience has shown China the full extent of the risks of war and the potential costs to it. Given that the Chinese communist party is riding a tiger that requires continual growth to keep its people happy I do not believe they will risk an invasion of Taiwan at this time. Though these decisions are not always fully rational the Chinese have been fairly consistent in maximizing their own self-interest these last decades.

 

[disciple Clint]

China wants Taiwan and the international prestige of being the peacemaker in the current crisis, thus displacing the US-led hegemony. But the relationship between Russia and China is not a completely open one and both sides distrust each other. It is a marriage of convenience motivated by a shared distaste for a unipolar world revolving around the USA and its Western allies.

China's economy suffered during the Pandemic shut down and now it has a covid crisis also to deal with. It cannot afford the sanctions that would come from obvious military support but it has upped its intake of cheap raw materials and energy from Russia and it now sells them some useful technology also. Despite this increase, it is still heavily dependent on oil shipped from the Middle East and its silk road infrastructure across Asia is not complete. Thus its ambitions for Taiwan would probably bring an economic crisis it is not prepared for if it went ahead with the invasion.

If anything Russia's experience has shown China the full extent of the risks of war and the potential costs to it. Given that the Chinese communist party is riding a tiger that requires continual growth to keep its people happy I do not believe they will risk an invasion of Taiwan at this time. Though these decisions are not always fully rational the Chinese have been fairly consistent in maximizing their own self-interest these last decades.

China has a goal of world domination so it goes well beyond Taiwan which is simply the bright shinny object designed to keep our attention focused while they replace the U.S. as the world leader. Biden seems to intentionally playing right into their hand.

 

[That Guy 11200]

Russia has vowed to "strengthen its military potential" along its border with Finland as a direct response to Finland’s accension to the NATO ranks on Tuesday (4 April)

Ooh, watch out! They're going to get the T-34s out of the scrapyards, then we'll really be in for it!

 

[mindlight]

China has a goal of world domination so it goes well beyond Taiwan which is simply the bright shinny object designed to keep our attention focused while they replace the U.S. as the world leader. Biden seems to intentionally playing right into their hand.

China has a long history of being surrounded by tributary states and being in a position of unrivaled power. It definitely resents that a foreign government has more power, wealth, and influence than it does. China would love to displace the USA and become the voice of reason for the world's masses while exploiting their country's natural resources for its own economy. But if its ambitions are global that is a long way in the future. They definitely want Taiwan "back." but that is really a regional territorial reunification in their view.

Meanwhile, China has deep domestic issues with many still living as agrarian peasants in the countryside, a looming demographic crisis, and major pollution issues and it needs continued growth to address these issues and to modernize. Its global aspirations are in fact about freeing itself from the power of a Western alliance that can set restrictions on what it can do in its own space (which apparently includes the South China Sea, Japanese islands, and Taiwan). The Communism with Chinese characteristics of Xi Jing Ping envisages the whole world being transformed by China's example but is in effect quite racist with a primary concern only for the Chinese people themselves. I believe they hoped Putin's war in Ukraine would begin the process of dismantling Western hegemony but it seems to have achieved the opposite and may well delay their plans for Taiwan as a result.

 

[mindlight]

Ooh, watch out! They're going to get the T-34s out of the scrapyards, then we'll really be in for it!

Meanwhile, the Finns report that the Russian units that used to be close to the border appear to have left for Ukraine.

 

[PsaltiChrysostom]

Ooh, watch out! They're going to get the T-34s out of the scrapyards, then we'll really be in for it!

The Finns do have 4 Me-109s in their museums, so they should be fine against the T-34s and probably some Il-2s