Russian Attempts at Grey Zone Ops Against Finland May Guarantee the Expansion Of NATO

Reports that Russia has moved military personnel and equipment toward the border with Finland emerged early this week. The saber-rattling is viewed in the West partly as a prelude to grey zone operations to intimidate the Finns against joining NATO. Ironically, these moves may have exactly the opposite effect.

On Monday, a Twitter video appeared to show Russian military vehicles carrying K-300P Bastion-P coastal defense missile systems according to the UK Daily Mail. A road sign indicating the direction of Helsinki was visible in the video.

The same day, NATO announced that two multinational naval groups of sixteen ships led by the Royal Netherlands Navy will be patrolling the Baltic Sea coasts of members such as Poland and Estonia to “maintain a credible and capable defensive capability”.

It’s uncertain whether the two moves are related given their near simultaneous timing but NATO clearly wants to reassure its Baltic States members as well as Poland. In contrast, the move of Russian equipment near Finland is an unambiguous signal that Vladimir Putin is seeking to intimidate the Fins.

His motivation is the increasing likelihood that Finland and its neighbor, Sweden, will act to join NATO before Spring is out. On Wednesday, Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin said during a joint news conference with her Swedish counterpart Magdalena Andersson, that Finland is ready to make a decision on NATO “within weeks” rather than months following an extensive debate in the 200-seat Eduskunta legislature.

Bryan Clark, senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, says that without doubt, “[Putin] is trying to intimidate Finland into not going on the path to join NATO.” Clark says the timing is important. The period between now and a possible announcement of the country’s application to join is a potential window of opportunity for Russia.

“You have more pacifist Finnish [political] parties which could get together and oppose NATO membership. Putin’s probably thinking if he can put some pressure on the country, maybe he can get the more pacifist [parliamentarians] to go against the NATO idea.”

Clark maintains that despite a widely held view in Washington that Finland will apply for membership, the decision is not guaranteed. “Public polls in Finland and Sweden are trending in the direction of NATO membership but parliament has to vote and right now it’s split 50-50. There’s an opportunity to get Finland into NATO but it’s not a sure thing yet.”

Russia has already articulated the “risks” of Finland’s ascension to NATO. Last week, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said that Russia would “rebalance the situation” with its own actions. These could play out before any announcement and during the period when the current 30 NATO countries consider whether to green light Finland’s membership. The process could take four months to a year to complete, leaving a further window before Article 5 (NATO mutual defense) protections would kick in.

In the interim, Putin will almost surely increase the pace of “grey zone” operations (actions that fall short of obvious military confrontation) against the Fins. Esa Pulkkinen, the permanent secretary at Finland’s Ministry of Defense, told Breaking Defense last week. “We need to be ready, of course, to face consequences.”

Those consequences are outlined in a new security report released by the Finnish government on Wednesday morning. The report maintains that Finland will be a target of extensive and multifaceted hybrid influence activities. While they may involve the use of military pressure (re-locating K-300P coastal defense missiles) or even military force, the report cites several hybrid activities likely forthcoming from Russia.

They include public misinformation campaigns inside Finland, the “instrumentalization of migration,” with Belarus’ possibly forcing refugees across the borders of neighboring countries, interference with lines of communication between the government and the private sector, and possible disruption of basic services and the Finnish economy.

These have already started Clark notes. “They want the Finnish press to pick up their operations and publicize them which they’ve done. They were driving [missiles] down the road very obviously going to the Finnish border, having people take pictures of it.”

He adds that Russia will likely undertake advanced hybrid electronic warfare actions, possibly hi-jacking cellphone networks to push out series of notifications declaring that if Finland joins NATO, Fins will find themselves victims of Russian aggression. Crippling cyber attacks on Finnish infrastructure, remotely or thru wireless networks, may also be forthcoming.

While daunting, such actions aren’t new to the Fins Sean Monaghan, U.K. visiting fellow, at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) says.

“Finland has daily experience of Russian ‘gray zone’ aggression, from airspace incursions to cyber and economic coercion. It hosts the European Center of Excellence for countering hybrid threats and has extensive constitutional and practical abilities to counter what it calls ‘hybrid influencing’ from Russia – not least the cohesiveness and resilience of its civil society.”

The country has arguably been preparing for the worst with Russia since the 1939 Winter War when the Fins alone repelled Russian forces in six months, leading to the Moscow Peace Treaty of 1940 and 80 years of neutrality that may end with NATO membership.

An extensive feature in the Financial Times recently explained how the country has harnessed every level of society to prepare for the possibility of conflict with its neighbor from stockpiling six months worth of fuels, grains, and pharmaceuticals to practiced bomb shelter and civil communication plans and the absorption of one-third of its adult population into the military.

Given Finland’s level of preparedness and its long historical memory, the possibility – perhaps probability – is that Russian grey zone ops could actually backfire, accelerating public and parliamentary desire to join NATO.

“Putin has shown himself to be very effective at mobilizing his enemies against him,” Clark observes. “The war against Ukraine has obviously brought NATO together in a way it had not been before.”

Pressuring Finland comes with a real chance of producing the opposite of the effect Russia wants Clark adds. “It seems we’ve crossed the Rubicon where the more peace-minded populations in Finland and Sweden have decided that remaining at peace will be best achieved by joining NATO.”

CSIS’ Monaghan agrees. “In my experience the Finns are calm and determined. They will certainly not be intimidated by the Kremlin’s age-old playbook of rattling the nuclear saber – in fact the opposite will be true. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has jolted Finland [and Sweden] out of their non-aligned slumber and made NATO membership inevitable. If there is one thing that will seal the deal, it is nuclear intimidation.”

That would be a major reverse for Putin. Finland shares the longest border with Russia of any EU state, stretching over 810 miles (1,300 kilometres). It would align one of Europe’s best militaries (far better than Germany’s military) with NATO in the strategically vital Baltic Sea region.

“There’s that much more territory to defend,” Clark says. “Russia has historically had a neuralgia about defending its frontiers. That puts more strain on the [Russian] military.”

Finland is a security provider, not a consumer, Monaghan points out.

“It already meets NATO’s targets for defense spending. As well as a highly capable and modern military [including 64 F-35s on their way] it has perhaps the most advanced civil defense arrangements in Europe, with a large reserve force, general conscription and civil defense education in schools. Finland’s model of ‘total defense’, or what it calls ‘comprehensive security’, is much admired in NATO and would bolster the Alliance’s strategy of resilience.”

While the Ukraine conflict has already put Finland’s trading relationship with Russia in the coffin – according to Breaking Defense, Russia accounts for 4.5% of Finland’s exports and the export of goods and services to Russia accounts for approximately 1.6% of Finland’s value added – new Russian grey zone operations would close the lid.

“Finland was a major provider of telecommunications and electronics to Russia,” Clark says. “I think that’s a problem for Russia. The loss of Finland as a customer for Russian metals, oil and gas is also an issue. Russia will feel that for sure and Finland has a lot more options.”

In the long term, Finnish and Swedish NATO membership would cement the very thing Russia has tried to avoid for half a century, a closing crescent of opposing allied nations on its border with western society and economy. The pressure might be reminiscent of the Cold War, a (thankfully) indirect economic/military competition whose resource and political strains forced the Soviet Union to the mat.

Putin’s grey zone intimidation may drive a once reluctant Scandanavia into the arms of NATO and, with a smaller empire to call on than his forebears, start the clock on his regime’s dissolution.