Landmines, fences and plenty of ‘sisu’: Life living next door to Vladimir Putin

Vladimir Putin is building up his military forces along the border with Finland, the sparsely populated Nordic neighbour with fewer people than Russia has construction workers. At the same time, Donald Trump is threatening Finland’s economic interests.

Could Finland’s situation be similar to Australia’s? According to Finnish President Alexander Stubb, it’s so much alike that the two nations’ security interests are joined at the hip.

“I feel that, you know, as far apart as we are, Australia and Finland, pretty much our security is tied hip to hip. Because you deal with similar types of security issues. You know, whether it’s China, for you, Russia for us.” And, for all US allies, it’s Donald Trump.

Two prosperous democracies. With relatively small populations. Both with big, overbearing neighbours intent on dominance. And both under pressure from Trump’s economic hostility and alliance inconstancy.

As Prime Minister Anthony Albanese flies to Beijing on Saturday to deal with the ascendant Chinese emperor Xi Jinping while trying to ward off Trump’s latest threats, might Finland offer lessons for Australia?

The head of the National Security College at the Australian National University, Professor Rory Medcalf, thinks so: “Finland has proved that small countries can protect themselves in an unforgiving world while remaining true to democratic principles.”

Medcalf has published a paper nominating Finland as Australia’s “North Star” for developing national resilience. Finland is regarded as a role model for much larger European states in standing against Russia. And Stubb has recently developed a reputation as a “Trump whisperer”, one of very few foreign leaders to change the US president’s mind on any topic.

So what is Finland doing about today’s twin pressures from Putin and Trump? Russia, which once annexed Finland and has attacked it several times over seven centuries, is positioning itself to do it again. “I know it sounds strange,” Stubb says in an interview at the president’s lakeside official summer residence, but “we’re quite relaxed at the moment”.

When Finland set aside its longstanding policy of neutrality and joined NATO in response to Putin’s 2022 attack on Ukraine, Putin threatened reprisals.

A section of the fence under construction at a border crossing near Imatra, in south-east Finland.Credit: Bloomberg

He has already inflicted some. Russia directed a flurry of Middle Eastern refugees to cross the land border into Finland in an attempt to sow chaos. Helsinki rewrote its laws and closed its eight border crossing points. It cut itself off from Russia economically.

This hurt Finland’s economy. It’s still recovering. And Russia had been supplying 10 per cent of Finland’s energy. “It was very difficult,” says the director general of the Confederation of Finnish Industries, Jyri Hakamies, but Finnish companies and customers worked around it.

Finns watched the daily price of electricity closely, “and they adjusted their behaviour, you might postpone charging your car or” – the ultimate Finnish sacrifice – “going to the sauna”. Hakamies says a fast-growing wind energy sector and the timely advent of a new nuclear reactor soon closed the gap.

And Russia is suspected of cutting undersea cables connecting various European nations, including Finland. Helsinki detained one such saboteur ship. China is accused of likewise cutting cables in the Taiwan Strait.

Now, the shape of possible future Putin reprisals has begun to emerge. Satellite imagery in May revealed new Russian military infrastructure being built along the border with Finland. Hangars for fighter jets, helicopter bases, warehouses for armoured vehicles and troop encampments indicate a long-term build-up is under way.

A satellite image showing Luga Base in Russia near the border with Finland.Credit: Planet Labs PBC

Their shared border of 1340 kilometres is now the longest point of contact between Russia and any NATO member.

Finnish General Sami Nurmi said the country was doing its job as part of NATO to “prepare for the worst”. It’s difficult to see how the Finns have again won the title of the happiest people in the world in the shadow of such danger. How can any leader be relaxed in such a situation?

“Our base case is very simple,” Stubb says. “Within the next five to 10 years, two things will hold true with Russia. One is that they will not revert into a peaceful liberal democracy. And second, they will continue a military build-up.” Those assumptions could just as easily be applied to China.

“And when the war ends in Ukraine, which it will at some stage, you have to ask yourself the question – where do you put the 1.2 million soldiers? Some will retire, some will do something else, but still there will be bases. And where will Russia build those bases? Of course, they will build them and send them there,” to its border with Finland.

“So it’s kind of nothing new. We can observe, we see the movement of the soldiers, we see the build-up of the infrastructure. It’s normal. We did the same.”

Not that the Finns are inert. Last week, Stubb gave formal notice that Finland was withdrawing from the Ottawa Convention against the use of landmines. On Wednesday, Reuters broke the news that Finland, together with Lithuania, will begin manufacturing landmines next year. And Helsinki is building a 200-kilometre barrier fence along one stretch of its Russian border.

Importantly, Stubb refuses to betray any awe or anxiety. While Trump initially hailed Putin’s invasion of Ukraine as “genius”, Stubb assesses the Russian leader rather differently. He considers Putin to be a strategic fool and a military failure: “Some people are trying to hype up the threat,” Stubb says from his stylised presidential castle near the tiny resort town of Naantali.

“I don’t think he will test Article 5,” Stubb says of the NATO treaty provision that declares an attack on any alliance member to be an attack on all.

Peter Hartcher interviews Finnish President Alexander Stubb at his residence near the resort town Naantali.Credit:

Stubb’s commitment to NATO is personal. For decades, he urged Finland to join, but the country committed to careful neutrality as an article of faith. He failed to win support.

As the British author and Helsinki resident Jonathan Clements puts it: “Finland went nowhere near NATO for 70 years. It seemed like a stupid idea to antagonise Russia, and the Finns learnt the hard way in 1939 that they might be left all on their own to fight a Russian aggressor with little more than ‘thoughts and prayers’ from the rest of the world.”

Putin transformed Finland’s view, almost overnight. “After the invasion of Ukraine, the Finns figured they might as well go right ahead, and the sea change in that attitude took a lot of people, me included, by surprise,” Clements, author of A Short History of Finland, tells this masthead.

Abruptly, Stubb was vindicated. He’d served as diplomat, foreign minister, finance minister, prime minister, then retired from politics to go into the private sector. He only decided to campaign for the presidency when Putin ordered his forces to seize Kyiv.

Stubb, a marathon runner, explains: “When Russia attacked, our opinion, rules changed, and perhaps it would be useful to have someone as president of Finland who had been on the right side of history in this particular question.”

He was elected last year to a six-year term. In the Finnish system, while executive power resides with the prime minister, the president has some foreign affairs powers and is the commander in chief. Like the prime minister, Petteri Orpo, and his government, Stubb is a member of the centre-right National Coalition Party.

Finland’s President Alexander Stubb at the Presidential Palace in Helsinki. Credit: Bloomberg

He is dismissive of Putin’s war: “Look, this year, he has advanced 0.25 per cent of the Ukrainian land mass at a cost of 167 soldiers dead per kilometre. It’s a pretty damn high price to pay.

“What I would argue is [that it’s] the biggest tactical and strategic mistake in modern history because he set out to pacify Ukraine; it’s going to become a member of the European Union, and eventually NATO.

“He set out to dismantle NATO. Well, he just doubled the border with NATO through Russia with Finland. He set out to destroy the transatlantic partnership. Well, together we’re now hiking up our defence expenditure to 5 per cent [of GDP over 10 years],” a commitment agreed to by all NATO members last month.

“He set out to dismantle the EU. Well, I’ve never seen it more united. So Putin failed on all accounts.”

The Finns famously waged a fierce war of resistance against overwhelming Soviet forces in the Winter War of 1939-40. The tenacity of 275,000 poorly equipped Finns humbled a mighty Red Army of over a million men and brought Moscow to the negotiating table.

Finland ceded one-tenth of its territory, but Joseph Stalin was forced to relinquish his aim of annexing his neighbour. It preserved its independence against all odds. The Finnish word “sisu” entered the international lexicon as a byword for indomitable willpower. Or, as Clements put it: “That huge Soviet army rolling across the border and the Finns just standing there and saying, ‘NOPE’.” Today, he says, Ukraine is a living example of sisu.

A veteran MP from the opposition Social Democratic Party, Johannes Koskinen, says: “We remember the Winter War when we were alone against Stalin’s Soviet Union. That’s why we give so much support to Ukraine.”

US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin meet in Finland in 2018 during Trump’s first presidency.Credit: Pablo Martinez Monsivais

But the biggest contemporary reason that Finland is admired throughout Europe and beyond is its steady vigilance when everyone else relaxed at the end of the Cold War.

Finland has joined NATO for its protection, but other European members of the alliance also feel comforted to have Finland, population 5.6 million, as their new ally.

In Denmark, former diplomat Jonas Parello-Plesner observes that “it’s a huge boon that Finland, which never stood down militarily, is on our north and east with a large mobilised army and a huge military reserve”.

Stubb says: “There’s a reason why we have over 60 F-18s. We just bought 64 F-35s. There’s a reason why we have long-range missiles, air, land and sea. And there’s a reason why we have the biggest artillery in Europe, with Poland. And the reason is not Sweden.”

But hasn’t this been cripplingly expensive? The surprise is that, until the last few years, Finland was spending the equivalent of just 1.5 per cent of its GDP on defence. Australia now spends 2 per cent, with a plan to expand to 2.3 per cent over a decade.

“It’s cheaper to have a conscription army than paid soldiers,” explains the Social Democrats’ Koskinen, who chairs the parliament’s foreign affairs committee, “so we have more money to spend on F-35s and artillery and so on.”

He adds that countries with small populations and high salaries cannot compete against countries with big populations on low salaries: “Russia and China have huge armies of over a million. Small countries with standing armies on high salaries don’t have enough forces. That’s why smaller countries should have conscription.”

Finland is now spending 2.5 per cent of its GDP as it arms for a more dangerous future and has pledged to meet the new NATO target.

But Finland’s real strength is something greater. As Stubb puts it: “You fight wars on the military front, but you win wars at home.” This extends beyond conscription into the civilian and business sectors, under the rubric of “comprehensive security”.

“We have a security of supply agency, which has basically 18 tasks, including security of food, security of energy. So they have deals, storages and stocks with farmers, with energy companies to make sure that in anything from a natural catastrophe to weather, to war, we can sustain and keep up society.

“We have civilian shelters which can house 4.4 million people out of 5.6 million people around the country. And they are, you know, underground, fully protected.”

Australia can learn from Finland’s comprehensive security policy, says ANU’s Medcalf: “Public-private sector co-operation is key.” Indeed, Hakamies of the Confederation of Finnish Industries says the system “is not based on law, it’s based on co-operation – companies talk to each other, they rehearse what they will do in a crisis, they train in all the sectors that are crucial when the borders are closed”.

Interestingly, Australia has committed to a similar concept of “whole of nation” security, involving society and business, as recommended by the Albanese government’s defence strategic review, but that’s where it remains – in the review, on paper only.

“So,” Stubb summarises, “we have a lot of both military and civilian capacity, and that’s the takeaway that we’ve had. It’s the classic – ‘in order for you to avoid war, you have to prepare for it’. And that’s what we’ve always done, because we’ve had over 30 wars and skirmishes with Russia since the 1300s.”

And Trump? While other leaders were studying how to win a meeting with the US president and how to avoid a monstering like the one administered to Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky, Stubb was invited to Florida in March for a game of golf with Trump.

“I probably spent more time with the president of the US during that day, playing golf, with a break for lunch, than my three predecessors put together,” Stubb says.

“I come from a small country. For me, in many ways, it’s a bonus to be able to have a relationship with the president of the US.” A month later, the pair sat together at the funeral for Pope Francis.

The New York Times noticed that, after each of his meetings with Stubb, Trump toughened his rhetoric on Putin. “It could be a coincidence. Or Mr Trump could be listening to Finland’s president, Alexander Stubb, who has emerged as a prominent voice of Europe’s smaller nations on Russia’s war against Ukraine,” speculated the paper.

If so, he hasn’t yet followed through. Stubb wants 500 per cent tariffs on any country that buys Russian oil or gas; Trump has so far failed to impose any sanctions on his close friend Putin.

Stubb has declined to disclose the content of his talks with Trump, but says, “I’m probably a conversational partner”.

“I can describe to him the pulse of Europe on Russia. I can describe to him our experience with Russia because we have 1340 kilometres of border with Russia.”

But it’s on the topic of icebreakers that Stubb proved persuasive. Trump had wanted to build some in the US. Stubb appears to have convinced him to buy from Finland instead. It’s a big win for Finland, the world’s icebreaker “superpower”.

What’s Stubb’s secret? “To say that I’m a whisper[er], I think, is inflating it. I don’t think anyone whispers in the ear of President Trump, but I’ve had good conversations with him.

“What is my secret? My secret is I played college golf. I was in the Finnish national team in golf.” Trump has lavished praise on Stubb’s golf game. Does this mean Albanese needs to learn golf to get a meeting? Stubb smiles. His only reply: “I think your defence minister plays golf well”.

Alexander Stubb speaks to Donald Trump at the funeral for Pope Francis.Credit: Getty Images

Richard Marles does indeed take his golf seriously. So seriously that the parliament went into repeated uproar over the cost to the taxpayer of Marles’ travelling on VIP flights with his golf clubs. “Probably the cheapest investment in national security in history if it helps him get access,” remarks one Canberra observer.

“Oh, how people scoffed at the idea,” Clements reflects. “Young Alexander Stubb, off to study at an American university on a golf scholarship. What possible use could that be? What possible situation could arise in his future political career where being a world-class golfer would suddenly … oh, yes, right.”

Yet Finland suffers the same Trump tariff penalties and threats as the rest of Europe. In Australia, the opposition would probably use this point to needle the government. In Finland, the opposition’s Koskinen has no criticism but supports the president: “It’s widely appreciated that Stubb has created this contact. It’s good that a small country can be heard at big tables.” Stubb explains that, “for us, foreign policy is existential”. Too serious for politics.

Does Stubb feel secure with NATO, even though it’s led by America, an unreliable ally? “I rely on America,” replies the Finnish president. “I think sometimes the public debate is inflated … Not anywhere have I heard the US withdrawing from NATO.

“We just had a historic NATO summit where we agreed to increase our defence expenditure from 2 per cent to 5 per cent [of GDP] and Trump should be given credit for that. He’s not the only reason we do it. We do it in our self-interest because the security situation has changed.

“The US now begins to pivot towards the Indo-Pacific, they’re telling the Indo-Pacific, look what the Europeans are doing – they are doing 5 per cent, why not you?” Trump’s Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth has told Marles that he wants Australia to spend 3.5 per cent of GDP equivalent on defence. This is not inconsistent – the new NATO target of 5 per cent is in two parts, with 3.5 per cent devoted to traditional military outlays and 1.5 per cent for security-related infrastructure.

“So it’s not going to be a burden shift. It’s going to be a burden sharing,” Stubb concludes. “Can you imagine us being outside of NATO? It would be like being naked, outdoors, in minus 20 degrees. It would not be comfortable.”

Overall, what can Australia learn from Finland? Hakamies, formerly Finland’s defence minister, says: “The easy answer is to have conscription and invest in comprehensive security.” Stubb says he wouldn’t presume to advise Australia, though he concedes that “I do take advice from Kevin Rudd on China … everyone has to”.

The big picture that he paints in a forthcoming book is a world divided into two competing blocs, with the winner decided by a third “swing” bloc. “My claim is that we’re looking at a triangle of power, which is the global West, global East and global south,” he says. “So the global West is basically us [Europe] and you and North America. We want to maintain, more or less, the current liberal order. Of course, the jury is out whether the US will continue to have a lead of this group. President Trump, that’s up to him.” This is a group of some 50 countries.

“The global East is led by China, about 25 countries. You know, it has the likes of Russia, Iran, North Korea, and countries that vote with China in the UN. And then you have the global south with 125 countries, where you have swing states like India, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, perhaps United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa, Brazil, Argentina, Mexico.”

If the West wants to succeed, it needs to enlist the south bloc, he argues: “Because they’re the ones who decide. So if we take the moral high ground and continue preaching to the global south, we’re going to lose this game to China.” He wrote the book, Triangle of Power: Balancing the New World Order, in English.

China is, by far, the dominant challenger. Russia is a “vassal state” of Beijing, Stubb says. “They are, right now, allies of interest, but China could drop Russia at the snap of its fingers if it so desires.” Will China succeed as the dominant global power? “The jury is out.” And, as Albanese heads to Beijing: “You just have to pick your battles when you come from a slightly smaller state.”

If it should come to a world war, values-based alliances would be central, says Stubb, a lifetime student of international affairs: “There are few countries in the world that are values-based alliances, and I think they come from Europe. They also come from Australia, New Zealand, South Korea and Japan, United States and Canada. And that’s why, if anything would ever happen, we would certainly rely on an alliance in one form or another with Australia.” And, no doubt, a large measure of sisu.

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