The good news is that most of the border is frontier.
Oh, that's a relief!
I had been thinking that most of the border might be, yuh know, not frontier.
Regards,
As I recollect, lakes provide a good defense for both Finland and Russia.
The bad news is that we have added another country to defend up to and including nuclear war. The US provides the insurance policy and pays the premiums. Good deal for Finland.
And heavily forested at that!
Long north-south border on the east parallels the single highway highway and rail line to the Kola Peninsula, home to Russia's northern fleet and multiple military airbases. Heavily forested, sparse population. Perfectly suited to special forces operations against Russian supply lines.
East if Helsinki is a completely different topography. This is where the Winter War of 1939 was largely fought. Forests, lakes and marshes. Finland “lost” the winter war largely because they ran out of bullets. Neither Sweden nor Germany would sell them munitions.
Russian Navy and commercial shipping would largely be bottled up in St. Petersburg. Access between the Baltic and St. Petersburg is through a small gulf that freezes in the winter and lies between Finland and Estonia. The navigation channel is a mile or three wide over much of its length. Lay out a mine field, a pile of antiship missiles and poof St. Petersburg is corked up.
“The good news is that most of the border is (undefended) frontier.”
Murmansk is vulnerable to attack now and Pootin has to do something about it before his people start complaining. That means moving troops away from Ukraine.
Most of Finland is Frontier, rural, period.
Nearly twice the size of PA with 42% of PA’s population.