Originally Posted by
Azor
Putin stated in the article: "Do you think we will keep it as it is: our troops at 1,500 (kilometers, 900 miles) away?"
Unfortunately, he must not be a student of geography, or perhaps his orders to redeploy Russian forces east of the Urals before the impending NATO offensive was ignored...
More than one major Western Military District base is within 500 km of Finland, mainly due to the proximity of Saint Petersburg. I fail to see how Putin can militarize the district even more unless he camps 40,000 troops on Finland's borders as he did with Ukraine.
Regardless of the math, this is a threat one must take seriously, as Finland's non-aligned and Soviet-sensitive status was one of the perks of the Cold War. He may very well calculate that using force on Finland would bring back that status and discourage Sweden from forging closer ties to NATO. Finland is a key "buffer" for Russia, as much as Ukraine or Belarus is.
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