Finland's entry into NATO and the foreseeable incorporation of Sweden forces Russia to take measures, as Russian President Vladimir Putin himself and other members of the Russian power have been warning for some time. This task is already underway, said yesterday a high command of the Russian army, who specified that the anti-aircraft defense systems on its northwestern border will be increased.
"The anti-aircraft defense forces are studying measures to defend the state border in the northwest of the country in line with the increasing threat," said the deputy commander of the Russian Aerospace Force, Lieutenant General Andrei Diomin, in an interview in Krásnaya Zvezdá. (Red Star), newspaper of the Russian Defense Ministry.
In addition to Finland's joining the Alliance, at the end of March the governments of Finland, Sweden, Norway and Denmark agreed that their air forces (together some 250 combat aircraft) will now function as a single unit. The decision of these four Scandinavian countries may mean another headache for Moscow.
"Our combined fleet can be compared to a large European country," Danish air force commander General Jan Dam told Reuters.
Finland became the 31st partner of the Atlantic Alliance on April 5. After Putin ordered military intervention in Ukraine on February 24, 2022, the Nordic country and its neighbor Sweden abandoned decades of neutrality and asked to join NATO. Sweden will achieve its goal if Turkey and Hungary finally give it their go-ahead.
Finland shares more than 1,300 kilometers of physical border with Russia, and that doubles the direct contact between Russia and NATO.
These incorporations worry Moscow, which now finds itself with a greater presence of allied troops near its borders: the opposite of what it said it intended to avoid before the current conflict broke out. Before requesting accession to the Alliance, Finnish President Sauli Niinistö called Putin. He told him that Finland was making a mistake. Later, however, Putin assured that since “Russia has no problems with these countries”, the enlargement “does not represent an immediate threat to Russia”.
That does not mean that Moscow will let its guard down. Both Putin and his press secretary, Dimitri Peskov, have said that the measures Russia takes will depend on the deployment that the allies make in Finnish territory.
In December 2021, when Putin demanded negotiations from the United States to obtain security guarantees for Russia, he set NATO's expansion in countries that were part of the USSR, especially Ukraine and Georgia, as red lines. The entry of Finland and Sweden was not then part of the Kremlin's geopolitical plan.
Moscow reacted to Finland's entry into the allied bloc by announcing “countermeasures”. Peskov assured on April 4 that NATO expansion is “an attack on Russia's national interests. This is how we perceive it. And this forces us to take countermeasures to ensure security, both tactically and strategically.” Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu added for his part that "it creates risks of a significant expansion of the conflict" in Ukraine.
Lieutenant General Diomin explained in the interview in Krásnaya Zvezdá that where Russia has already considerably increased its anti-aircraft defense systems is on the borders with Ukraine. “In the areas close to the special military operation, the number of units equipped with medium- and long-range anti-aircraft missile systems (S-400, S-300PM2 and S-350) has doubled and the number of Pantsir-S anti-aircraft artillery systems,” Diomin stated.
He also specified that these systems "operate under joint command" from the Russian border regions of Belgorod, Briansk and Kursk to regions farther away that enemy air strikes can reach.
These three mentioned regions have regularly suffered the impact of missiles or drones launched from Ukrainian territory. Two of them have decided to suspend this year the traditional military parade on May 9, the day of the Soviet Victory over Nazi Germany in World War II. Kursk regional governor Roman Starovoit announced this yesterday, citing security reasons. Last week, Belgorod took the same measure, according to its governor, Viacheslav Gladkov, "so as not to provoke the enemy with a large amount of equipment and military personnel in the center of Belgorod."
