Finland and Poland bolster defenses amid Russia concerns

Over decades, Finland built its preparedness around the concept of “total defense” — a mobilizable population, civil resilience, shelters and a military designed to keep fighting with or without allies. The country can mobilize nearly 870,000 reservists out of a population of 5.6 million, a figure set to reach one million by 2031.

“It’s fair to say Finland is more ready to fight alone than other frontline countries. The U.S. wind-down doesn’t impact its readiness,” said Eoin Micheál McNamara, a postdoctoral fellow at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs.

Finland spends nearly 3 percent of its GDP on defense and, in line with its commitments to NATO, it intends to raise that figure to 5 percent by 2035. Its air force expects to receive U.S.-made F-35 fighter jets in the coming months. Like most European militaries, the Finnish armed forces are still catching up on drone warfare, but on land they have one of Europe’s largest artillery arsenals.

“Stalin called artillery the god of war,” said McNamara. “Unlike a lot of Western countries, Russia never forgot about artillery. Finns never forgot either.”

One of Finland’s greatest military assets is the land itself. An army invading from the east would have to move through a country of few roads, dense forests, deep snow and freezing temperatures, with little light in winter and almost none of the darkness that conceals movement in summer. In the woods, long, slender gray-white trunks stand so close together that it is impossible to see more than 50 meters ahead. In spring, when the leaves turn bright green, visibility drops even further.

Even without the U.S., it’s unlikely Finland would have to fight entirely on its own. Several European countries have an interest in keeping Russia off NATO’s northern flank, according to Charly Salonius-Pasternak of the Helsinki-based Nordic West Office think tank, referring specifically to Norway, Sweden and the U.K.

Still, Finland would face a Russian army with more manpower and a willingness to use sheer numbers in ways the alliance cannot easily match. “Since the Winter War, the very basics haven’t changed,” said Pitkäniitty, the border guard commander. “We have to be able to use the terrain, operate the environment better than anyone else — then, we have leverage,” he added. “Is the forest a typical Russian battle environment? I would say no. Their lessons are learned in more open environments.”

Finland is now trying to teach its NATO allies how to fight on that ground. In May, two multinational exercises in southeastern Finland — Northern Star 26 and Karelian Sword 26 — were designed in part to show troops from countries including France and the United Kingdom how to operate in Northern Europe’s forests, lakes and swamps. U.S. soldiers from the Virginia National Guard also took part.

Karelian Sword — conducted in Finland’s Vekaranjärvi region — involved some 10,000 soldiers in a simulated invasion of the country. One main takeaway from days of drilling in the woods was that armored vehicles and drones are ill-adapted for Finland’s forests. “It’s also very hard for commercial drones to find Finnish troops in the forest because of the leaves, unless you have a thermal camera,” according to Col. Ari Määttä, the Karelian brigade’s deputy commander who commanded the exercise.

The Nordic country is also preparing to add another obstacle. Alongside Poland and the three Baltic states, Helsinki withdrew last year from the Ottawa Convention banning anti-personnel landmines, arguing that Russia never joined the treaty and is already using the weapons in Ukraine.

Several Finnish military officers confirmed to the Global Reporters Network that the country’s defense forces plan to purchase anti-personnel landmines in the coming months. The mines would not be deployed in peacetime, they said, but would be available if the threat of a Russian invasion became more imminent.

“We have quite a long border with Russia,” said First Lt. Terra Tevajärvi, a 33-year-old reservist and trained mechanized infantry officer who works as a filmmaker. Standing in a clearing, with the sounds of gunshots in the distance, he added: “Landmines would help slow [an attacker] down and make our lives easier.”

‘Nuclear IQ’

There is one domain where geography, conscription and military readiness offer little protection: nuclear weapons. While Finland has practiced for a conventional defense for decades, it is only since it joined NATO three years ago that it has had to incorporate nuclear deterrence into its calculations.

Since joining the alliance, Helsinki has participated in its Nuclear Planning Group, taken part in nuclear exercises and begun rewriting laws that still reflected its long history outside the alliance. In June, Finnish lawmakers lifted restrictions on the transport and storage of nuclear weapons on Finnish territory, a legacy of its non-nuclear posture before NATO membership.

Changing that framework had proven more contentious than the discussion about joining NATO itself. Opposition parties resisted lifting the restrictions, while officials and analysts argued that Finland could not be a full participant in NATO defense planning without understanding how nuclear deterrence works. “Readiness in that regard is being learned,” said McNamara. “You hear the phrase: ‘Finland needs to upgrade its nuclear IQ as a society.’”

Finland’s nuclear debate highlighted an uncomfortable truth. While the country is better positioned than most frontline countries to defend its territory without American ground forces, it’s no more able than the rest of Europe to replace Washington’s nuclear umbrella.

While the U.S. has not publicly questioned that guarantee, the Trump administration’s unpredictability has pushed Helsinki and other European capitals to examine whether Europe can build a stronger deterrent of its own.

After meeting with France’s top general in the Finnish capital in June, the country’s Defense Minister Antti Häkkänen acknowledged talks with Paris about French President Emmanuel Macron’s proposal to broaden his country’s nuclear deterrent to include other European countries. The French president, who officially proposed the idea in March, has left what he means by it purposefully ambiguous. Paris has floated joint exercises and temporary deployments of nuclear-capable French fighter jets, but not a formal European nuclear guarantee. For Finland, it is still unclear what participation in the scheme would mean.

In the meantime, Helsinki is hoping that hosting troops from two nuclear-armed allies — France and the U.K. — will add another layer of deterrence, even if the force itself is conventional. Paris and London have expressed interest in participating in a NATO battalion that will be based in Sweden but operate in northern Finland. Designed to strengthen the alliance’s presence in the high north, the force will be led by Stockholm, another formerly neutral government that joined the military alliance after Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.

“We’ll be on high alert, with high readiness to act,” said Col. Daniel Rydberg, who leads Sweden’s NATO mission in northern Finland. Along with Finnish border guards, NATO troops would be among the first responders if Russia decided to test Finland, he said in a phone interview the day before the force’s inauguration in June. “The message to Russia is deterrence,” he said.

Just what that would mean in the case of an attack by the Kremlin will depend on people like Nuutti Kurikka, a 20-year-old conscript whose great-grandfather fought in the Winter War.

Deep in the Finnish forest, Kurikka, a platoon leader, stood in front of a tank. The lesson of that war, he said, is “a mentality that we can overcome very hard things.”

Unlike officials in many European capitals, he is not anxious about the Trump administration’s ambiguity regarding NATO. “It’s not good that the relationship is a bit shaky, but Finland is prepared to defend itself alone if needed,” he said. “We did it before in the past.”

Poland is the largest country on NATO’s eastern flank and the alliance’s biggest defense spender by share of GDP. Warsaw had already exceeded NATO’s 2 percent target before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine; this year, it is set to spend 4.8 percent of GDP on defense even as its economy continues to grow.

At the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion, Poland sent more than 300 tanks from its own stocks to Ukraine, then moved to replace and expand its arsenal with off-the-shelf tanks, infantry fighting vehicles, support vehicles and rocket artillery from the United States and South Korea. Its army is NATO’s third largest, behind the U.S. and Turkey.

The sheer mass of the Polish military, combined with Warsaw’s role as one of the world’s largest buyers of U.S. weapons, has earned Warsaw a reputation in Washington as a model ally. Even U.S. President Donald Trump, while berating other European countries over defense, has regularly praised Poland. The U.S. keeps thousands of troops in Poland, the vast majority on a rotational basis, an arrangement the Polish government is keen to keep as a deterrent to any Russian attack.

The country’s importance to NATO is not just a matter of spending; its size and location make it the alliance’s central frontline state in any potential confrontation with the Kremlin. During the Cold War, West Germany was NATO’s conventional bulwark against the Warsaw Pact. Today, Poland plays a similar role on NATO’s eastern edge.

“While Germany has long focused on quality, Poland stands for mass and speed,” said Carlo Masala, a professor at the University of the German Federal Armed Forces in Munich and one of Germany’s most renowned security experts. “Because Warsaw does not rule out having to fight tomorrow. It is what is called ‘fight tonight.’”

Tusk’s Eastern Shield project is Warsaw’s attempt to reinforce its defenses along its 800-kilometer (500-mile) frontier with Belarus, a close ally of Moscow’s, and Kaliningrad, the heavily militarized Russian territory wedged between Poland, Lithuania and the Baltic Sea. Designed as a network of obstacles meant to slow an attack, channel Russian forces and buy time for NATO to respond, the system includes anti-tank and infantry trenches, concrete barriers, bunkers, drones, thermal cameras, mines and nearby military units, while also using natural obstacles such as swampy terrain. When completed, it is expected to cost about €10 billion ($11 billion) according to Poland’s defense ministry.

Poland’s military buildup is part of a large-scale, multi-billion-dollar new deterrence and defense system along NATO’s eastern border. Known as the Eastern Flank Deterrence Line, it is planned to stretch from Finland to Romania. Brig. Gen. Thomas Lowin, deputy chief of staff for operations at NATO Land Command in Izmir, says the alliance will build up much larger stockpiles of weapons, ammunition and equipment in border states, while establishing an “automated zone” of sensors and robotized weapons to help halt Russian forces early in any attack.

Cezary Tomczyk, Poland’s deputy defense minister and the official overseeing the project, called his country’s part of the effort the largest fortification effort in Europe since World War II. “We are building a border that sees further, reacts faster and makes it harder for the enemy to act at every stage,” he said. “Russia must know one thing: Every kilometer of potential aggression will cost more time, more equipment and more resources. The Eastern Shield is intended to raise the price of aggression to an unacceptable level.”

‘NATO’s Achilles’ Heel’

So far, however, along parts of the border, the Eastern Shield is still more promise than reality. Polish officials are reluctant to discuss delays, and not every element of the system is meant to be visible. But large sections of the border are not visibly fortified. A military facility near Dąbrówka warehouses large numbers of hedgehog anti-tank barriers, but since Tusk’s visit to the village, none have been placed along the border.

Poland’s defense ministry told the Global Reporters Network that engineering troops, using pre-positioned material from warehouses, would be able to erect fortifications along the entire border within seven to 14 days. But a logistics expert who has held senior military positions said some elements cannot be moved into place so quickly.

“Laying one kilometer of reinforced concrete hedgehogs takes anywhere from several weeks to several months, depending on terrain conditions,” said the logistics expert, who was granted anonymity to discuss sensitive defense matters. “It took the army three weeks to fortify a relatively short section.”

A short distance from Dąbrówka, an agritourism farm named “At the End of the World” welcomes visitors looking for a rural retreat. At the Russian border, less than 100 meters away, the only obvious protection is a simple concertina-wire fence and a scattering of warning signs.

The owner, Wioletta Bornejko, does not want the new fortifications to reach her meadow. “I hope they don’t put up those concrete hedgehogs here,” she said. “Even barbed wire scares away tourists. A neighbor recently closed down a similar business.” Others in the area say the constant talk of war has already hurt local businesses.

The quiet is deceptive. Travel east from Dąbrówka and you’ll reach the so-called Suwałki Gap. Ben Hodges, a retired general who served as the commander of U.S. Army Europe, has described this short stretch of Polish and Lithuanian territory separating Kaliningrad from Belarus as NATO’s Achilles’ heel. The fear is that a Russian attack could try to close the corridor from both sides, cutting Poland and the rest of NATO from the Baltic states to the north.

Farther east, Poland’s border with Belarus stretches some 420 kilometers (260 miles). There, the limits of the current defenses are even more evident. “I don’t see any other fortifications here,” said one soldier from a brigade serving on the border.

Much of the border is protected only by a 4-meter-high (13-foot-high) fence built in 2022. Erected to stop migrants from crossing into Poland, it would offer little protection against tanks. Poland’s defense ministry told the Global Reporters Network that it currently “has material resources that allow it to secure border sections with a total length of over 140 kilometres” — less than a third of the length of the frontier.

‘Drone Wall’

Tanks and other traditional forces aren’t the only thing Poland would have to worry about in case of a Russian attack. Anti-tank measures are of limited use when the weapons of choice fly far overhead and are cheap enough to exhaust conventional air defenses. And so the country is busy developing an anti-drone system it calls SAN.

Its development gained urgency after 19 Russian drones entered Polish airspace last year, forcing NATO aircraft to shoot them down wi