How Finland joined the West

Finland’s entry into Nato in 2023 dealt a major blow to Russia in the Baltics. For years, President Putin had warned his Finnish counterparts that a decision to join the alliance would be met with an appropriate response, but the implicit threat has been slow to materialise. In February, Russia reconstituted its Leningrad Military District, a Soviet-era administrative region tasked with defending Russia’s northwestern territories, but otherwise there’s been a palpable quiet in the far north. In recent weeks, this has begun to change.

On 18 November, the sole fibre optic cable linking Finland and Germany was severed, and hours after a cable connecting Sweden and Lithuania was also cut. The German defence minister, Boris Pistorius, was quick to declare the incident an act of sabotage and a ‘hybrid action’ but so far no culprit has been named. Suspicion has fallen on a Chinese merchant ship, the Yi Peng 3, which sailed from Russia with a cargo of fertiliser and has been anchored in Danish territorial waters for three weeks, encircled by Nato warships.