If Finland, Russia’s immediate neighbour, feels twitchy enough to think about joining NATO, that may ignite debate in Sweden. That could in turn foster closer co-operation among all five Nordic countries—though even full NATO members are not always good at this.
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Russia Admits Violating Finnish Airspace
The Associated Press - 13 hours ago
A Russian military transport plane flew about 3 miles into Finnish airspace along the southern coast for three minutes Sept. 14, prompting Finland to demand …
Russia admits violation of Finnish airspace Helsingin Sanomat
Russia admits violating Finnish airspace Xinhua
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Be that as it may, it would be pertinent to point out that the Finns would have every reason to be antagonistic toward their much larger eastern neighbour. Not only did Russia rule Finland for almost a century, but under the terms of their peace treaty at the end of World war II, Finland not [...]

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Finland’s membership in Nato would not improve the country’s security standing but pose additional risks, Colonel-General Valeri Manilov, an adviser to the speaker of the Russian senate, was quoted as saying on Wednesday.
Gen Manilov’s comment comes shortly after Jyri Häkämies (cons), the defence minister of Finland’s new centre-right government, said he was in favour of [...]

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As Finland and other Scandinavian nations become increasingly absorbed with defining their separate relationships with NATO, behind-the-scenes politics suggests Finland and Sweden are moving closer to joining neighbors Denmark and Norway as formal alliance members before 2012.
This closer relationship became apparent on April 15, when Finland and Sweden jointly announced that they are prepared to [...]

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If you believe the speeches, the Cold war has broken out again
By Pekka Hakala
Finland, adhering strictly to its policy of neutrality and non-alignment, naturally managed to stay outside of the superpower spats and conflicts of the 1980s, but what else do you remember of the Cold war rhetoric of those days?
For me, the only [...]

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