"NATO's New Frontline"

foreign [Music] of Ukraine NATO's Frontline borders with Russia have taken on a new significance and sensitivity in the Arctic north of Scandinavia only Norway currently faces Russia directly over a common border but all that will change when Norway's Nordic neighbors Sweden and Finland but and active members of The Alliance later this year [Music] unlike Norway's relatively short border with Russia finland's is over 1300 kilometers long defending it against a newly belligerent and unpredictable neighbor is a major undertaking When developing its future strategy for the Finnish Russian border NATO will inevitably draw on the experience of its existing member Norway especially given the similarity of the remote Arctic Terrain indeed The Finnish ambassador to Norway recently stated that Finland had a lot to learn from Norway's defense of a border with Russia drive a little more than 400 kilometers North from the Arctic Circle in Norway and you come to the small industrial town of shirkiness drive another 20 kilometers further on and you come to the border with Vladimir Putin's Russia before Russia's invasion of Crimea and more recently eastern Ukraine shakiness's border status was not a major security problem many road signs here were and still are in both Norwegian and Russian and there have traditionally been cultural exchanges and collaboration across the border down in the docks Russian ships are still accepted for maintenance but elsewhere in the town there is a new reality and Border tensions are growing economic sanctions have effectively halted all road traffic between Norway and Russia often the only road crossing is simply closed much of NATO's 200 kilometer border with Russia in Norway is defined by the deepest part of this the pavisk river this means there is often no actual fence just a sequence of marker posts but on either Bank regular military observation posts face each other bristling with high-tech surveillance equipment traditionally and in an attempt to minimize military tensions the Norwegian posts are manned by lightly armed young and relatively inexperienced conscripts completing their 12 months of compulsory national service but the Norwegian Armed Forces ensure that rigorous training and self-confidence make up for Youth and inexperience on this the actual front line with Russia yeah we had we had great education where we first started in the military and we focus we focus a lot on being independent and there we have all specific roles we all do the same job but we are educated so that we are we can figure out things by ourselves and don't need help from others all the time these conscripts are obviously just the eyes on the immediate border the full resources of the Norwegian Army lie ready and increasingly Alert in Garrison's further south just a few kilometers away on the Russian side there is an increasing military presence and they also have their own conscripts Vladimir Putin's recent mobilization decrees briefly increased the flight of young Russians across the border but today new FSB checkpoints on the Russian side have stemmed this flow of would-be Asylum Seekers on the Norwegian side conscripts like Emma nicolaison are all too aware of the the plight of their less fortunate counterparts they see in their sights across the border yeah we are very close to the people on the other side so before I came up here I wonder a lot what they were like but now that the I'm here I see that we are not that different from each other we do similar things um they seem very ordinary to me in October last year Norway put its Armed Forces on high alert in response to Russia's increased and indiscriminate attacks in Ukraine the Prime Minister Jonas gas store said it was the most severe security situation in several decades as a member of NATO Norway has the protection of Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty this means all other 29 NATO members are obliged to come to its Aid in the event of an enemy threat or attack because of Article 5 Norway regularly hosts military deployments from other NATO states such as the USA as a result Norway's defense planning is now fully integrated into that of NATO but where Norway's border with Russia ends finland's begins and the Finnish border does not have the clear geographic features of the pavisk river and is often unmarked in remote forest and Tundra and Finland is not currently a full member of NATO so it does not enjoy the protection of article 5. and Finland also has an unsettling history with Russia it is a history of of wars and invasions so very typical for all the neighbors of Russia and finally so exception and we have all kind of like been there and done that where Ukraine is right now so that also kind of explains why why it feels so personal to too many Finns and to see how Ukraine is defending its independence against Russia from the early 19th century Finland was an autonomous archduchy of the Russian Empire but in 1917 the Russian Revolution gave it the chance to seize its independence but the turmoil of World War II and Stalin's pact with Hitler promoted a Russian invasion in 1939. finland's winter war in which they repelled the Russian troops but had to cede seven percent of their territory the Soviet Union completely underestimated Finland as an uh adversary and expected to take care Helsinki within two weeks and and it came very differently the winter was also a very cold one a lot of Soviet soldiers simply froze to death and and and it was it was quite remarkable the Soviet losses that Finland inflicted on uh on the on the Soviet troops and and therefore Finland avoided the Baltic neighbors fate of becoming part of the Soviet Union so so that has really defined uh finland's post-world War identity in many ways you know this um this experience of having been able to fiercely defend Independence and and and retaining that Independence has always been a very very big and and Central issue since the second world war Finland has maintained a Resolute neutrality and never applied to join NATO instead it has trusted in simple diplomacy for its security all that changed in February last year when Russia invaded Ukraine yukakopra is a member of The Finnish Parliament for a constituency on the border with Russia it's an interesting develop development because before the war is collated in February it was below 30 percent of fans who supported NATO membership but in few days the numbers were soaring and and the it was almost in the 60 percent support in the end of the February and now it's something like 80 or 90 percent I think and I think that Finn's realized the situation is has changed although the fundamentals in the security policy of Europe have changed because Russia's aggressive behavior and although at the moment nobody's threatening of Finland we believe that the actions of Russia are such that we cannot trust that they wouldn't someday do that the realization that Finland might be next in Putin's sites prompted The Finnish government to re-examine its long-health neutrality and on May 27th last year the Finnish Parliament almost unanimously approved a decision to apply for NATO membership yeah and then it is and in July the Finish foreign minister and his Swedish counterpart signed the formal accession request to join NATO in the next few weeks Hungary and turkey are expected to be the last NATO member states to finally ratify Finland and Sweden's full accession to Nato Sweden's membership will provide NATO with wider Naval control of the Baltic and especially the narrow Straits through which Russia's Baltic Fleet must pass to access the North Sea and the North Atlantic but finland's accession will bring a more profound change in European security overnight NATO will inherit Collective responsibility for over 1 300 kilometers of new front line with an increasingly belligerent Russia this is what much of that front line Looks like no fences no watchtowers just the odd marker post deep in uninhabited Finnish wilderness where the borders are marked and there are official Crossing points the impact of an invasion several thousand miles away is Stark this is the valima Border post on the once busy highway between Helsinki and Saint Petersburg today EU sanctions and public moral outrage has slowed traffic to a trickle Russians used to come here for day trips to shop at the nearby Zar shopping mall today it is deserted a thousand place car park is empty this is the cafe where truck drivers would rest up before heading on to the rest of Scandinavia or back to Russia the usual concept is or was that people from Saint Petersburg area or close close by come to in the morning to the area they do some shopping and we'll go back in the evening in the in the Heyday of the uh Russian tourism they the Figures were something light like in for example in the South Korean County it was more than 300 million euros a year so it's almost 1 million euro per day those Russian tourists brought in when they were shopping in after this war escalated all cooperation across the border has has been Vanishing should I say there's some traffic of course people are traveling back and forth but not to that not that much as before it's like one tenth of the figures we used to have but the Russian government is less concerned with the reduction in luxury shopping than the military implications of Finland joining NATO since the second world war Finland has built up a highly effective Defense Force it needed to do so in order to maintain its declared neutrality which precluded its membership of any wider military Alliance in diplomatic circles this tactic of a smaller State learning to live with an unpredictable and more powerful neighbor has become known as finlandization but with the end of the Cold War there was a growing acceptance that finland's much wanted neutrality was often only skin deep well Finland hasn't been really neutral since 1995 when Finland joined the EU and this is something that Finland has been both like to emphasize that the status has been military non-alignment not actually neutrality we have been very much a part of of the European Union and the West already all along so also in that sense it is not like a huge mental change or anything like that and especially in the Finnish case this non-alignment was very pragmatic and not so much ideological it was just like consider it the best way to manage the relations with Russia and that change with the invasion of Ukraine nevertheless non-alignment also requires military Independence and finland's substantial Defense Force is considered by many analysts to be one of the most effective in Europe despite this nominal neutrality The Finnish Defense Force has behind the scenes been increasingly cooperating with NATO Finland has been working so closely together with NATO for the past 30 years already like literally since the 90s Finland joined the partnership for peace initiative of NATO in in 1994 and since 2014 Finland has been an enhanced opportunity partner just like Sweden as well so there has been this very like deliberate process of attempting to reach the highest possible level of interoperability and cooperation with NATO just below the threshold of full membership so actually the groundwork has been done and and this all this continuous work towards the the highest level of uh of compatibility as well with NATO structures and forces actually enables an almost instant operational Readiness of Inland and Sweden this need for interoperability was given a more formal boost in 2012 when the UK proposed a multinational defense partnership in the baltics called The Joint expeditionary force or Jeff was effectively a quasi-nato Alliance that was opened to non-nato States and in 2017 both non-nato Finland and Sweden joined the Jeff concept is very good for Finland and and it gives us a good experience how to organize operations with the British troops and and so forth and of course the presence of British troops and other NATO troops in Finland from our point of view increases their security level in the Finland at the moment when we are not complete completely NATO members yet waiting for the ratification in practice a British Army artillery unit is receiving training on Finnish one 20 millimeter mortars in Finland the process is two-way with benefits for both Nations most of Finland is covered either in forests or lakes so our biggest weapon to defend ourselves is the artillery it gets to places where the normal infantry cannot we have a lot of a lot of lot of things to offer on that aspect and I think countries like United States or British they have a long history with uh coordination from air to ground and from Crown to air so in that retrospective I think you have a lot to offer to us as we do to you and he acknowledges that Finland is no stranger to multinational cooperation on security issues attention yeah I see no problem in that we have a long history in peacekeeping operations we have taken part in different NATO operations for example in the Afghan Afghanistan and many United Nations operations for example in Lebanon and Iraq and different places even before the NATO became a question we had a long history of working with our foreign countries his British counterpart is similarly positive on the benefits of joint training um so when Finland does eventually join NATO from a soldier side it will be really seamless we'll be able to integrate quite easily with them their way of working is similar to ours the differences we've already seen um will be rectified because we have a NATO standard so there hasn't been any big problems we've had a few how they measure like a direction is different to how we measure a Direction so that's a bearing from me to a point so we use Mills and they use something called bills and they measure six six thousand bills and we have six four hundred so we have to like come across these slight differences none of it is a problem at all we just have to kind of be aware that we are slightly different in the way we do things and again wording of such so we have to avoid using slang as such but working with them they have the same motivation reverse they're just as disciplined in disaster like with most Scandinavian countries they they all speak perfect English though sometimes they are a little shy about using their English once you get them talking it's no problem at all and there are a few words like I said before the slang that makes things difficult but other than that um it's fine Finnish defense analyst Mina Alanda confirms The Wider benefit of the joint expeditionary Force as Paving the way for finland's integration into NATO yes the Joint explanationary Force has been one of the initiatives that Finland has been participating very actively in and that has definitely further increased The Finnish interoperative interoperability with NATO forces and actually the UK is one of the most important European security partners for Finland as well as for the other Nordic countries outside of the region so so that brings together in a very very kind of like mutually profitable way that the Nordic defense Corporation with the Baltic countries as well and then the UK which is is a very important partner in this region and of course the Netherlands so that is something that Finland can definitely build on going forward with the with the NATO membership recently multinational cooperation has increased extending to Nations not formally part of the joint expeditionary Force let's go [Music] the US is not a formal participant in the joint expeditionary Force but these U.S artillery units are exercising with their 155 millimeter howitzers in deepest Finland they are working alongside their Finnish counterparts and a UK Fire Control Detachment from the Royal artillery Lieutenant Harry Fox is the command post officer with the fourth Regiment of the royal artillery so the multinational environment the initial issues come from the fact that each artillery unit has their own way of sending down Farm missions but we very much have overcome that with the introduction of the multinational command post which contains American British and Finnish officers who would turn that into information to send to the gun line so it was slow to start with but coming through now it's actually becoming a lot quicker a lot Slicker and delivering effects on the ground within good time frames the experience of the joint exposure missionary force and other multinational exercises like this one suggests a relatively easier simulation of the Finnish Defense Forces into NATO even though in terms of timing it's been slower than we'd expect but generally I think we've sped up massively over the course of the exercise hopefully going forward to be able to do more exercises of this of this type I think it's something that we definitely want to do again in the future yes it's proven massive benefits and we've learned a lot together just in a short period of time so what we've taken from this time maybe a year from now we do it again and we'll be much more effective yeah but what of the reaction of the man who prompted the decision of the Finnish people to join the North Atlantic Alliance after half a century of neutrality um the scale and timing of those threats is still uncertain Finland has been expecting Russia to react way more strongly to the the NATO membership process finna was kind of prepared for everything um we have a lot of experience with the with the poor kind of Russian repertoire with airspace violations that happen usually like a couple of times every year another fear is of cyber attacks and in December the Russian defense minister Sergey shoigu stated that Russia would deploy a new Army Corps to The Finnish border but Dr Minna Alanda is not convinced that Russia currently has the resources to do this of course like one of the main questions regarding the the 12 340 kilometers long border between Finland and Russia is how will the situation develop in the coming years currently the border is very peaceful Russia has not built up any troops there although it always threatened to do so in in the event of Finland joining NATO but Russia simply does not have the capacity right now because it is so tied up in in Ukraine and actually Russia has moved both troops and equipment from The Finnish border away to Ukraine it's also actually the opposite has happened there are other security implications for Finland that come from the eu's changing relationship with Russia and they are exacerbated by such a long and often unmarked border the borders of course also earn an EU external border and the Schengen border which means that there are some like humanitarian obligations for example that apply to Finland and that the right to Asylum must be always given and and practically possible but there's also especially in this special situation now that the EU has has decided on on quite a lot of new sanctions on Russia because of the invasion and they are quite extensive quite detailed also on really like individual Travelers and so there's quite a big responsibility also to make sure that those sanctions are not evaded at the border and and because of the lack of Border controls between the Schengen countries the main burden is is on Finland for example when Russians pass through Finland on their way to Europe or back from from from other destinations in Europe when the Hungarian and Turkish parliaments finally ratify finlands and swedens full accession to Nato the security challenges for Europe will be profound overnight finland's long and historically troubled border with Russia will acquire the security of the North Atlantic treaties article 5. up to 30 Nations will then become collectively responsible for its defense for many like the UK existing collaboration will mean there will be little change but for others Finland believes it has plenty of expertise it can offer in return I'd say you had the best ability to fight Arctic for Warfare in the world and in that sense we could be a we could have a NATO Center of Excellence or whatever other those called in in active warfare and also using field alt artillery because Finnish field artilleries is very efficient and we have good Concepts we could show and teach in other NATO countries how to use in these environments we're operating [Applause] so although there has been frustration at Hungary and turkey's reluctance to ratify Finland and Sweden's accession there is still an air of optimism and inevitability in Finland I think that practical problems are next to none in joining NATO because Finland has been developing its Defense Forces and preparing it for NATO membership for 20 years so technically we already just plug us in thank you [Music]

Channel: Wildcat Films

Views: 92,712

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Id: OlTS67XyZMU

Length: 28min 8sec (1688 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 31 2023

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