Free Republic

Russian strategic culture: Why Russia does things the way it does By Martti J. Kari, former intelligence Colonel in the Finnish Defense Forces BACKGROUND My background is that I have served in military intelligence for most of my career. I am an officer and an intelligence colonel who retired last fall. I started here in January at the university as a teacher. I teach intelligence. As I have spent most of my career in intelligence, Russia and the Soviet Union have always been my point of interest. As a young lieutenant, I was sent to what was then Leningrad to...

Finnish start-up company Aircohol is pioneering the creation of a vodka-like spirit using carbon dioxide (CO2) extracted directly from the atmosphere. This ground-breaking approach has the potential to reduce the industry’s carbon footprint by an astonishing 50 per cent. As they say in their own words ‘Aircohol is about saving the planet in a cheerful way!’ At the core of the process is a bioreactor that converts CO2 into alcohol through a two-day fermentation process, all while avoiding the emission of greenhouse gases. The results can be distilled yet further to produce a vodka-like spirit with an alcohol content of...

Senior Finnish politician Päivi Räsänen is facing being hauled through the courts again over “homophobic” Tweets and writings going back 20 years, despite having been acquitted in the case twice already. The Finnish Public Prosecutor is appealing a November 2023 court decision that Päivi Räsänen, a long-serving member of Parliament, party leader, and former national interior minister was exercising free speech when she quoted the bible and discussed homosexuality on several occasions from 2004 to 2019. Räsänen is the former leader of the Finnish Christian Democrats Party and holds orthodox views on the issue, having described homosexuality as a “disorder...

Back in November, Finland closed part of its border and accused Russia of trying to stir up trouble by sending migrants on bicycles to border crossings. Why bicycles? It seems that Russia has been bringing these migrants across the entire country (none of them are Russian) and then giving them bikes to travel the last few miles on their own. There’s video of Russian authorities handing out bikes from the back of a van. There are no Russians trying to cross the border. They're sending people without necessary travel documents from countries like Yemen, Somalia and Syria.Russia is taking advantage...

"Russia has never threatened Finland in modern history. We had no reason for confrontation," said Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov, according to the Russian state news agency Tass. The tone intensified further after Finland announced a few days before Christmas that it was initiating a new defense agreement with the USA, granting the country access to 15 bases on Nordic soil. Both Sweden and Finland applied for NATO membership last year after Russia initiated a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, fundamentally shaking the security situation in Europe. Sweden's application is still pending approval, while Finland formally joined the defense alliance as a...

Could a secret trip to Finland hold the key to an unresolved chapter in American history? Documents that were kept secret for 60 years have finally been released by the Finnish Security Intelligence Service (Supo), according to YLE. On the night of October 10, 1959, Lee Harvey Oswald checked into Helsinki’s Hotel Torni. His passport identified him as an American, and he booked room 309 for five days. However, after just two nights, Oswald abruptly left, claiming a desire to return to the US, a statement later proven false. Oswald’s Mysterious Movements In Helsinki Oswald’s actions in Finland puzzled authorities....

A court in Helsinki ordered the pre-trial detention of Yan Petrovsky, a Russian neo-Nazi mercenary who has fought against Ukrainian troops, as he awaits potential formal charges on war crimes he allegedly committed in Ukraine, the Finnish media outlet Helsingin Sanomat reported on Dec. 18. Petrovsky is a co-leader of Rusich, a Russian neo-Nazi paramilitary unit that has fought against Ukraine. He is accused by Ukraine, and now Finland, of committing war crimes during the Russian invasion of Donbas that started in 2014. Finnish authorities arrested Petrovsky in July as he tried to fly to France under the name Voislav...

MOSCOW (Reuters) -Kremlin chief Vladimir Putin dismissed as complete nonsense remarks by U.S. President Joe Biden that Russia would attack a NATO country if it won the war in Ukraine, adding that Russia had no interest in fighting the NATO military alliance.The war in Ukraine has triggered the deepest crisis in Moscow's relations with the West since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, and Biden warned last year that a direct confrontation between NATO and Russia would trigger World War Three.In a plea to Republicans not to block further military aid earlier this month, Biden warned that if Putin was victorious...

Russian President Vladimir Putin has vowed "problems" for Finland after he says the Nordic country was "dragged into NATO" amid the war in Ukraine. "Look, Finland was taken and dragged into NATO," Putin said in a new on-camera interview. "What did we have, some kind of dispute with Finland? All disputes, including those of a territorial nature in the middle of the 20th century, were all resolved a long time ago. We had the best, most heartfelt relations. Economically, everything was developing. Yes, in the timber industry, there were some problems linked to the necessity to develop timber processing within...

Alex Batty was found Wednesday in southwestern France by a delivery driverA 17-year-old British boy was found safe in France this week, six years after being taken by his mother, and recently ran away from her because she wanted to move them to Finland, according to a report. In 2017, Alex Batty went on a two-week trip to Spain with his grandfather and mother, Melanie Batty — who didn't have legal custody of him and allegedly abducted him — but the trio failed to return to the U.K. at the time. Alex said after they went off-the-grid, they were constantly...

NATO’s newest member, Finland, has announced it will sign a bilateral defence cooperation agreement next week with the United States. The deal will allow Washington to station troops and store weapons inside the Nordic country, which shares a sprawling border with Russia.

KEY POINTS: * Tesla is facing mounting pressure across Scandinavian countries to sign a collective bargaining agreement with employees in Sweden. * Finnish transport workers’ union AKT on Thursday confirmed that a blockade on Tesla vehicles earmarked for Sweden would also come into force across all Finnish ports from Dec. 20. * One of Denmark’s largest pension funds on Wednesday announced that it would sell its holdings of Tesla stock over the U.S. giant’s refusal to enter into agreements with labor unions. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Tesla’s troubles with labor unions in Scandinavia deepened as it lost legal action against Sweden’s postal service...

The prehistoric site is known as Tainiaro, located about 50 miles south of the Arctic Circle in the Finnish region of Lapland...Back in 1959, local workers came across stone tools in Simo, which is situated near the Baltic Sea's northern edge, just 80 kilometers to the south of the Arctic Circle. The site, named Tainiaro, underwent partial excavations in the 80s. This led to the revelation of thousands of artifacts, including pottery, stone tools, and animal bones.The archaeologists were also able to notice 127 possible pits of different sizes that could have been sediment-filled. Some had burning evidence, while others...

Finland has announced it will close its last remaining border crossing with Russia amid concerns that Moscow is using migrants as part of “hybrid warfare” to destabilise the Nordic country following its entry into NATO. “The government has decided to close all the crossing points on the entire (830-mile) eastern border,” prime minister Petteri Orpo told reporters, saying Finland faced an “exceptional” situation that the government blames on Moscow for orchestrating. The Kremlin has denied encouraging migrants to enter Finland and says it regrets the Finnish border closures. It comes as multiple drones were fired towards Kyiv on Tuesday evening,...

The Pentagon not ready to comment on Iranian video of a drone overflying the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower aircraft carrier... Starting on Friday warships from ten nations will patrol the Baltic Sea and North Sea... Outside the White House the national Christmas tree toppling... "We will not be part of a government that allows Hamas to exist" Israel's National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir warning... Peru's Attorney General Patricia Benavides formally accusing President Dina Boluarte of responsibility for the deaths of protesters late last year... "When the Minister of Justice insults the deputies of the National Rally, he insults millions...

Pekka Kallioniemi, a postdoctoral researcher at Tampere University in Finland, put forward the theory that Moscow could be deliberately pushing Helsinki to shut its borders to prevent Russians from fleeing should Russian President Vladimir Putin introduce a full-scale mobilization to draft more troops to fight in Ukraine.... "There is an interesting and feasible theory, that Russia will start partial or full mobilization after the March 2024 presidential elections, and that they actually WANT Finland to close the border so that young Russian men can't flee through Finland like they did during the first mobilization wave," Kallioniemi wrote on X, formerly...

The 28-year-old Iraqi man was so unhappy with the standard of asylum in Finland that he chose to return to Sweden, and rape a Swedish woman on the way. The woman did not want to notify the police at first, because of situation: the poor rapists was a refugee. But now the rapist has been convicted to imprisonment and deportation by the district court, which also states that he is not a refugee at all. The rape took place on the night of October 10 at a night train between Umeå and Sundsvall. The woman had booked a shared compartment...

Finland has accused Russia of flooding its borders with migrants from the Middle East and Africa over its decision to increase defense cooperation with the United States, a claim which Moscow denies. As many as 300 migrants from Iraq, Yemen, Somalia and Syria have arrived in Finland this week, Reuters reported, citing the Finnish Border Guard. The arrivals have prompted Finland to erect barricades at the border with Russia to stop the migrants from crossing freely into the country. The razor-wire barriers were put up Friday around midnight at the Vaalimaa, Nuijamaa, Imatra and Niirala border posts in southeast Finland,...

The Kremlin said on Monday it deeply regretted Finland's decision to shut crossings on its border with Russia, a move it said reflected Helsinki's adoption of an anti-Russian stance. Finland, a member of the European Union and - starting this year - also of the NATO military alliance, closed four crossings on its border with Russia on Saturday as it seeks to halt a flow of asylum seekers it says was instigated by Moscow. The border crossings it closed were by far the busiest crossing points. -snip- Russia's foreign ministry said later on Monday it had lodged a formal protest...

In the early hours of Thursday, the Minister of Internal Affairs of Estonia launched a pointed accusation against Russia, alleging a failure to detain illegal migrants at its borders. The incident sparking this contention involved eight Somali citizens attempting to circumnavigate immigration control, attempting to enter Estonia via Narva. Geopolitical Tensions Highlighted This incident brings to light the ongoing concerns around border security and immigration control, issues that hold significant weight for Estonia, given its geographical location and strained political relations with Russia. The accusation by the Estonian official not only underscores these concerns but also spotlights the intricate complexities...