As Putin spoke, Russian warships began training exercises in the Baltic Sea while Finland’s President Sauli Niinisto was due to meet with Sweden’s King Carl Gustav XVI and Queen Silvia on the lightly-defended island of Åland.
Niinisto - a close friend of Putin’s who was warned by the Russian leader he was making a ‘mistake’ by applying to NATO - abruptly cancelled the meeting and flew home with his wife.
Helsinki denied the move had anything to do with Putin’s comments or the Russian military drills, but it will do little to calm the nerves of Baltic nations who fear they are next on Putin’s hit-list once the war in Ukraine is over.
The Åland islands are a Swedish-speaking part of Finland that sit at the mouth of the Bay of Bothnia, which separates the two countries.
They have been demilitarised since the Åland War in the 1850s between Britain and France on one side and Russia the other, which took place against the larger backdrop of the Crimean War in the Black Sea.
It would be - along with the Swedish island of Gotland - a key strategic battleground in the Baltic Sea should Russia decide to take preemptive action against its Scandinavian neighbours over their bids to join NATO.
Putin’s reference to the various wars in with Sweden in which Peter the Great successfully fought the Swedish Empire off the mainland will send shivers down Scandinavian spines.
With word that the Russia Baltic Fleet had deployed out of Kaliningrad earlier in the day, it is thought that the proximity of Russian forces to the heads of state of Finland and Sweden on an undefended island might have prompted their hasty departures.
This has to be a lie. Russia is losing in Ukraine. You and your fellow Zelenskyy fanboys told me so multiple times in the last 3 months.
“The Åland islands are a Swedish-speaking part of Finland that sit at the mouth of the Bay of Bothnia”,
Swedish could overtake Finnish as the national language of Finland.
If Russia goes for Sweden and Finland, it will be time for
Europe to step up and get involved.
The Ukraine was sacrificed, but if Putin starts going after
more peaceful nations, f-him.
Everyone worrying about NAZIs in the Ukraine, don’t seem to
be worried about the one in Moscow.