Finland is ready to defend in the event of a Russian attack, the country has been preparing for this for “decades”. Timo Kivinen, Commander-in-Chief of the country's armed forces, spoke about this in an interview with Reuters.
“We systematically developed our military defense specifically for the type of hostilities that are being conducted there <in Ukraine - The Insider> , with massive use of firepower, armored vehicles, and also aircraft. Ukraine turned out to be too tough for Russia, it will be the same with Finland,” Kivinen said.
Finland fought for its independence with the USSR several times, so the country has not yet abolished compulsory military service. Of the 5.5 million people in the country, 280 thousand people are professional soldiers, another 870 thousand are reservists.
Independent Finland after 1917 did not enter into any military alliances - neither with Russia, with which the country shares a 1300-kilometer border, nor with Western countries. This was the case before the annexation of Crimea, after which Finland became a NATO partner country. But talk that Finland should fully join NATO only began after Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
