In a new essay for the state-run news agency TASS, Deputy Security Council Chairman Dmitry Medvedev claims that Finland is laying the groundwork for a possible NATO attack against Russia. Citing Helsinki’s “defensive measures” and NATO’s growing footprint near Russia’s northwest border, Medvedev argues that Finland is repeating its ruinous collaboration with Nazi Germany during the 1930s and 1940s. Meduza outlines these allegations and threats in the context of growing hostility between Russia and its northwestern neighbors.
In the text, Medvedev notes that he recently visited Russia’s border with Finland. The former president says he spoke to local officials and reflected on “the foolish policy the Finnish authorities are pursuing that’s clearly against their interests.” In his essay for TASS, he recites a long list of grievances against Finland that date back to the Second World War. He blames Helsinki for “the destroyed lives and shattered fates of millions of peaceful Soviet citizens who did not manage to evacuate from the western regions into the country’s interior” when Germany began its invasion.
Medvedev reasons that Finland’s cooperation with NATO and the U.S., as well as its abandonment of certain military neutrality commitments, violates the foundational agreement underpinning the post-WWII order between Moscow and Helsinki. “If there is no military-political component to the [1947 Paris Peace] Treaty,” Medvedev warns, “then there is no basis for our waiver of addressing unresolved ‘historical questions’ and no obstacle to raising the issue of the current Finnish government’s moral responsibility for the actions of its forebears.”
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Medvedev also suggests that Russia could seek additional reparations from Helsinki. He notes that the USSR ultimately received $226.5 million (almost $5 billion today) from Finland under the Paris Peace Treaty, but the Supreme Court of Karelia recently assessed WWII-related damages attributed to Finland and Finnish troops at 20 trillion rubles (almost $242.5 billion). “We have every legal right to claim this ipso jure,” writes Medvedev, adding:
This is especially the case against the backdrop of swelling anti-Russian militarist hysteria in Finland, stoked by saber-rattling. Out of [Finland], with its history of atrocities against Slavic populations and its fertile nationalist soil, an aggressive “anti-Russia” has emerged even more quickly than in Ukraine. Instead of the earlier plans for freedom-loving Ukraine’s “Finlandization,” what happened — in the blink of an eye — was the Ukrainization of Finland.
As journalists at Agentstvo note, Medvedev’s comments are part of a trend. In April, Security Council Secretary Sergey Shoigu said European countries plan to be ready for war with Russia by 2030. Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Grushko asserted that NATO and the E.U. are “actively preparing for armed confrontation.” In June, Medvedev warned that Russia must “respond in full” to Western “treachery,” even if it meant preemptive strikes.
The language in Medvedev’s TASS essay echoes Vladimir Putin’s rhetoric from just days before Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. At the time, the president argued that Ukraine would serve as an “advanced staging ground” for strikes against Russia if it joined NATO. The Kremlin continues to frame the war in Ukraine as a “preventive response” to Western aggression.
In June 2025, the Finnish media outlet Yle reported that satellite imagery revealed construction work to expand Russia’s military presence near the Finnish border. Two months earlier, The Wall Street Journal reported that Russia was sending its latest equipment and many new troops to bases along its NATO border, suggesting its capability “to wage its full-scale ground war in Ukraine while simultaneously increasing the strength and armament of its ground forces along the Finnish border.”
Earlier this year, the Russian Foreign Ministry journal International Affairs published an article urging Moscow to view the Baltic Sea as a “potential theater of military operations.” The text’s author, research fellow Nikolai Mezhevich, claimed that Russia’s “adversaries” among the Baltic countries (Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania) and Northern Europe (particularly Finland) are forming a so-called “gray zone” in the Baltic Sea.