Election strains Finland's diplomatic balancing act with Russia

yahoo/reuters ^

[Paid_Russian_Troll]

HELSINKI (Reuters) - From closer NATO ties to rumors of Kremlin-backed land deals on its border, Finland's diplomatic balancing act with Russia has come under the spotlight before Sunday's parliamentary election as politicians debate how far to challenge the Kremlin.The vote sees centrist opposition front-runner Juha Sipila, who favors military non-alignment along with two other major parties, battling center-right incumbent Prime Minister Alexander Stubb, who advocates joining NATO.

The debate was mirrored regionally after an unprecedented hawkish joint statement last week by Nordic countries - Sweden, Norway, Finland, Denmark and Iceland - that directly cited the Russian "challenge" as grounds to increase defense cooperation.

For the Nordics it reflected a year of Russian air force sorties, spy accusations and military border exercises. Moscow retorted immediately, saying moves by Finland and Sweden towards closer ties with NATO were of "special concern".

"It's unheard of to explicitly link Nordic defense cooperation to the Russian threat," said Anna Wieslander, deputy director of the Swedish Institute of International Affairs. "It clearly says 'us against Russia'."

That would be a sea change for Finland, which shares an 833 mile (1,340 km) border with Russia, with which it fought two bitter wars between 1939 and 1944, losing substantial territory.

The resulting "Finlandisation" became a Cold War byword for self-imposed neutrality and a willingness to accommodate Soviet interests driven by fear of its neighbor.

Helsinki has moved closer to the West since it joined the European Union in 1995 and the euro zone in 1999, but - like Sweden - it is still not in NATO. With about 8 percent of its exports dependent on Russian trade, Helsinki also tries to toe a pragmatic line with its former ruler.

That status quo has become strained with Russian air sorties and naval activity in

[GeronL]

Russia is threatening your borders, if you think playing nice doesn’t make you an easier you are dumbz

[1rudeboy]

Russia, that has a history of invading and occupying its smaller neighbors, sees their intent to defend themselves as a national security threat. Film at 11. (On RT).

[Cronos]

Geron — it’s easy to talk when you’re many thousands of miles away, but if you have the Russian eagle at your door, what do you do? You do what the Finns do — they are heavily armed and have plans in place for making the Russians pay dearly, but they know they can’t keep them out indefinitely, only until “help” arrives — the problem is that they don’t completely believe that the “help” will come, so they play nice and throw scraps to the eagle.