UK to station military officials in Finland as Russian troops mass on the border

UK to station military officials in Finland as Russian troops mass on the border



Posted by theipaper

6 comments

  1. Britain is to send military officials to Finland to support the country as it faces a build-up of Russian troops on its eastern border.

    A team of UK military liaison officers will join the development of the Nato alliance’s Forward Land Forces (FLF) in Finland.

    The FLF is part of Nato’s deterrence against Russia on its eastern flank and comes as Vladimir Putin plans to send thousands more soldiers to the 800-mile Finnish border, fuelling fears of a direct confrontation by Moscow with the West.

    John Healey, the UK’s Defence Secretary, will announce the decision to deploy a liason team to Finland at a Nato meeting in Brussels today.

    This follows the government’s [Strategic Defence Review](https://inews.co.uk/news/politics/what-to-expect-defence-review-3725941?srsltid=AfmBOopE98BpSCgkt5aOUEXuTtjSkkjinhUfDgYKctEfCUe7vLegCmfh&ico=in-line_link), published earlier this week, which committed the UK to taking the lead in Nato to increase European security.

    The deployment to Finland is a sign of increasing concern about the potential for a provocation by Russia to test Nato’s resolve. Finland’s military intelligence service expects there to be as many as 50,000 new Russian soldiers to be stationed at the border, boosting the current total of 30,000, [according to the Swiss newspaper Neue Zürcher Zeitung.](https://www.nzz.ch/english/russian-army-boosts-presence-near-finlands-border-ld.1886633)

    The Ministry of Defence said the team of liaison officers would work with both Finland and Sweden as they develop FLF Finland, which it said is a “vital component to strengthening the Alliance’s deterrence posture on the Eastern Flank”.

  2. Can someone please explain to me what might be Russia’s intention of doing this? Purely for intimidation?

    They are very deep in the Ukraine war, I doubt they can hold an additional front in their current situation

  3. Does Russia even have the spare resources to invade Finland?

  4. 50,000 is an insane amount of troops for a country that is deep in an all out war. What is the reason Putin is doing this? Just for intimidation / to test NATO’s response?

  5. To be honest following and understanding the Kremlin’s great plan is just insane, a mix between “they’re confident enough to do it” and “they couldn’t possibly do it, they don’t have the resources”.

    This deployment could be for intimidation but you don’t spend years to build bases on the border and then deploy such size. Could it be they want to devert the western support between two possible fronts?

    I want to point out the following months are the ideal time frame for an invasion before the winter comes back. Also by [Wikipedia numbers](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finnish_Army), Russia just deployed around half of the Finnish Army wartime personnel. This can’t be a simple fake out or shouldn’t be considered as such either, many believed so in 2022 and see what happened.

  6. Not sure why it is always the UK protecting European countries, especially when Finland is part of the EU. Where are the French and Germans in this?

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