Will Russia invade Finland? Not if it remembers history correctly

Finland might have been neutral for decades, but it owes its existence as an independent nation to its mastery of asymmetric warfare and, in particular, arctic combat.

Independent since 1917, Finland and its modern attitude to war were forged during the Soviet invasion of 1939, dubbed the Winter War.

Some 400,000 Soviet troops poured across the border into a country of just 3.5 million people. The Red Army brought with it 2,500 tanks, while the Finns had just 32 obsolete Renault FTs.

Yet rather than succumbing to the red tide, the Finnish Army made use of the advantage of fighting on home turf and turned the Soviet’s lack of experience in winter warfare to its advantage.

Mobile units of light infantry travelled around on skis, allowing them to glide across Finland’s thousands of frozen lakes and slip through its vast forests with ease to outflank and outmanoeuvre the Red Army.

As in Ukraine, long Soviet columns were restricted to roads and unable to disperse when Finnish troops emerged from the woods to strike them.

The road-bound Soviet forces were encircled and chopped into manageable chunks, which could be taken out systematically. The Finns dubbed this motti, the Finnish for a block of wood.

Armed with Molotov cocktails (first coined by the Finns during this war) and explosives, these highly mobile troops targeted weak spots in Russian tanks and armoured vehicles to disable or destroy them, taking out more than 350 tanks.

When isolating a convoy, troops would take out the lead and last vehicle to trap it and then pick off its remaining members with mortars and grenades.

Those troops could then ski off into the woods before Soviet reinforcements or artillery could pin them down.

The war would not persist in this manner. During the brutal cold of January, Soviet forces regrouped and reinforced. In February a force of 750,000 men was sent to finish the job.

This was a less mobile phase of the war and Finland survived by sending its reserves into grim conventional battles.

By March, they were close to exhaustion, but the scale of Soviet losses combined with fears of international intervention and the mud of the coming Spring thaw, drove Moscow to negotiate.

Finland paid a high price for its survival, losing nine per cent of its national territory, including the Karelian Isthmus, as well as 70,000 casualties. It would also face a renewed Soviet invasion in 1941, which it would survive only with Nazi support.

The country learnt a vital lesson, however.

Civilian population ready for crisis

Outside of Nato and with the Soviet threat ever-present, Finland would make itself so difficult to digest as to not be worth invading at all.

Almost a third of the Finnish population is a reservist, giving it nearly a million trained people to draw on. Its air force can scatter and operate from remote roads, while plans are in place to blow up bridges and mine shipping lanes.

Civilian society is also prepared to survive a crisis, with everything from banks to the media having a plan and thousands of bomb shelters scattered among civilian buildings.

Moreover, the country learnt from Russia’s use of “hybrid” warfare in Crimea and eastern Ukraine in 2014. In response, it set up special “readiness units” in which newly trained conscripts serve for six months.

They have additional training in advanced small unit tactics, helicopter insertion/extraction, urban combat and anti-tank warfare and operating alongside armour, making them able to respond to any incursion at speed and buy time for a full mobilisation.

While Finland may be turning to Nato for added protection, it brings with it decades of experience standing up to the Russian threat.