From Moscow’s perspective, the Russians need to bolster their defences to protect themselves from NATO expansion, which has always been a sore subject. The Baltic nations were the first members of the former Soviet Union to join NATO, bringing large stretches of Russia’s border up against NATO’s. The prospect of Ukraine, an even bigger former Soviet republic, following suit was so threatening to Moscow that it became one of the causes of the most devastating land war in generations.
“The Russian military has undergone a significant force expansion,” said Michael Kofman, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington. “After the war, the ground force will probably end up larger than before 2022. Looking at the planned restructuring of military districts, it seems clear that they’re going to prioritise areas facing NATO.”
NATO officials agree.
Whenever the war in Ukraine ends, a senior NATO official said, Russia would redeploy troops farther and farther to the north.
Russia believes that the Arctic and access to the Arctic are key to great power status, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive topic.
According to satellite imagery, Russian helicopters returned to a base near Murmansk, a port city in the Arctic Circle, after they had not been there for two decades.
American soldiers participating in a military exercise in Finland earlier this year.Credit: NYT
As Ukrainian drones target airfields across Russia, Russian command has moved assets north to get out of range. This has put them much closer to NATO territory.
Dozens of Russian warplanes were recently spotted at the Olenya air base, also in the Arctic and fewer than 100 miles from the Finnish border, according to the satellite imagery. Other recent activity includes more than 100 new tents that appeared about a year ago at Kamenka, a Russian base fewer than 40 miles from Finland.
“They are expanding their brigades into divisions, which means that the units near our borders will grow significantly – by thousands,” said Emil Kastehelmi, an analyst with the Black Bird Group, a Finnish organisation that analyses the military developments in the north and in Ukraine.
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Kastehelmi, who analysed dozens of recent images for The New York Times, said that the next few years could bring massive changes to the Finnish frontier, depending on how and when the war in Ukraine ends.
At Alakurtti, which is also close to Finland, and Petrozavodsk, a little farther away, the Russians have new buildings that can house at least dozens of vehicles. Activity has also increased elsewhere. New tents and military equipment recently appeared at a base about 80 miles from Estonia.
The Finns have an old expression: Russia is never as strong as it looks and never as weak as it looks. So, Finnish defence leaders have been characteristically matter-of-fact about the build-up.
“The increase of military force in our nearby areas will happen after the fighting in Ukraine quiets down,” said Janne Kuusela, defence policy director at the Finnish Ministry of Defence.
How long that would take, he said, he didn’t know.
But, he added, “That’s what we have to be prepared for”.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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