/FINLAND: Has Russia Come To Terms With Finland's NATO Membership Bid?

Viktor Bondarev, Chairman of the Defence Committee of Russia's Federation Council, writes on his Telegram channel that Russia will station additional troops on its border with Finland, if NATO admits the Nordic country and deploys offensive weapons to its territory.

• In conjunction with Bondarev’s suggestion that Finland has made its decision under overwhelming pressure from the United States, this sounds like a very lacklustre reaction. Note that earlier Finnish President Niisto described his phone call with Vladimir Putin as “held without exaggeration” as “avoiding tensions was considered important.”
• By contrast, in a sensationalist interview for the Mirror last week, Duma Defence Committee Deputy Chairman Aleksey Zhuravlyov warned that Russia could “question the existence of” Finland, if the latter joins NATO.
• Bear in mind that Zhuravlyov is a somewhat fringe political figure and not a member of the ruling United Russia party, while Bondarev is a decorated military commander and former chief of the Air Force and Aerospace Forces.
• Moscow’s ability to launch a more aggressive “military-technical” (using local parlance) response is severely limited by its resource-draining war on Ukraine. Using natural resources as a leverage is also problematic, as Finland has long been reducing its dependence on energy from Russia.
• Hawkish rhetoric could be heard in Russian state media over the weekend, which included nuclear sabre-rattling by a Rossiya One commentator, but this messaging primarily targets domestic audience.