IVALO, FINLAND—Only 20 miles of forest separate the Lapland Border Guard base in the Finnish town of Ivalo from Russia. From here, well above the Arctic Circle, the Border Guards monitor the activities of their not-so-friendly neighbor. And now, after Finland joined NATO in April last year and Helsinki and Washington decided to further strengthen their cooperation by signing a defense cooperation agreement in mid-December, the United States is officially authorized to position troops and equipment at the base.
The United States has similar agreements facilitating military collaboration with the other NATO members bordering mainland Russia: Norway, Estonia, and Latvia. These agreements also specify which of the hosting country’s bases can be used by U.S. forces. After Finland and the United States signed the agreement, Ivalo became the closest base to mainland Russia immediately accessible to U.S. troops.
“It is premature to assess what will possibly be invested in Ivalo, and the criteria are not public,” says Ville Ahtiainen, the deputy commander of the Lapland Border Guard, “but the overall result will be good, and it will deepen the cooperation between our countries.”
NATO’s new 830-mile-long border in Finland draws the alliance’s attention much more to the north, says Kristine Berzina, the managing director of the Geostrategy North program at the German Marshall Fund think tank. The area, she says, has “not received much consideration in the past, especially from a land forces domain.”
This despite Russia’s powerful forces nearby, which include its crown jewels: the Northern Fleet and its nuclear submarines, held in and around the Russian port of Murmansk. The strategic harbor is so close that road signs point to it in Ivalo’s icy streets.
While Finland is counterbalancing Moscow’s superiority in the high north, the enhanced military presence comes with a trade-off. As Berzina notes, the new border also “increases exposure to Russian threats.” After the signing of the December agreement, Moscow declared that it “would take the necessary measures to counter the aggressive decisions of Finland and its NATO allies,” and it has many tools at its disposal. Whether it is weaponized migration, covert operations against infrastructure, or airspace violations, these hybrid attacks are now not only Finland’s problems, but also NATO’s.
An aerial view shows the snow-covered Finnish town of Ivalo on Jan. 11. The Lapland Border Guard base, 20 miles from the Russian border, is located on the outskirts of the town.
In joining NATO, Finland abandoned the policy of military neutrality it had maintained since shortly after World War II. Despite being a NATO partner since 1994, the Nordic country had never been able to count on the protection of allies. Consequently, for decades it took care of its own defense, developing impressive military capabilities and a society trained to fight. According to military experts and security officials, Finland’s presence in NATO brings to the club a sort of Arctic Sparta, a highly trained force that will move the alliance’s center of gravity to the north. (The missing brick in the anti-Russian northern wall is Sweden, which is expected to join the alliance soon, once Hungary gives the green light.)
“Our biggest asset is the concept of total defense that we have developed in all these years,” says Ville Sipilainen, a special advisor to the Finnish defense minister, who closely followed the cooperation agreement’s negotiations. “As a small country, we had to use the entire society for defense. We have very developed infantry, artillery, and of course, the expertise in Arctic warfare.”
On Feb. 11, Finland will go to the polls to elect its new president. The two candidates, Alexander Stubb and Pekka Haavisto, share a decisive anti-Russian position, and no major changes in foreign policy are expected after the vote.
In Ivalo, dozens of young conscripts (usually between 19 and 21) have just arrived and shaved their heads to start military service. They can be seen marching around the base and learning the basic concepts of discipline in the first days. Finland is one of the few EU countries where military service is mandatory, and with 285,000 soldiers ready to be armed, it has one of the largest wartime infantries in NATO. (Around 900,000 people out of a total population of 5.5 million have had military training.)
Cpl. Topi Kinnunen poses during a training session for the newly arrived conscripts at Ivalo’s Border Guard base on Jan. 11.
The Border Guard in Ivalo trains the conscripts especially in reconnaissance along the frontier, where the atmosphere has recently been tense. Last fall, about 1,300 asylum-seekers from countries such as Somalia, Syria, Yemen, Kenya, Morocco, and Pakistan started showing up at Finland’s border crossing points, including the one close to Ivalo. Helsinki has accused Moscow of transporting the migrants to the border and pushing them to seek refuge on the other side, posing “a serious threat to Finland’s national security and public order.” At the end of November, the government closed the entire border, which will remain shut at least until April 14. Also last year, Helsinki started building a 124-mile fence along its eastern frontier.
Weaponized migration is not the only hybrid attack Moscow has been accused of recently. In October, a pipeline connecting Finland and Estonia was severely damaged by what Finnish investigators think was the anchor of a Chinese cargo ship. Rumors of Russian involvement have inflamed the debate in the media since. In the last weeks, GPS disturbances have also affected Finland and the Baltic region, and many Finns suspect that Russia is the source.
During the migrant crisis, the Border Guard received the support of one of, if not the, most skilled Arctic formations in the world: the Finnish Jaeger Brigade. Located in Sodankyla, 100 miles south of Ivalo, it owes its name to a unit of Finnish nationalists created in Germany during World War I, when the grand duchy of Finland was still part of the Russian Empire. For Finland’s NATO allies, the Jaegers and the winter combat course that they organize have become the go-to guys when it comes to Arctic warfare, and Western countries—including the United States—have been sending their troops there to train for years. Since Finland’s accession to NATO, those requests have increased.
Conscripts in the Jaeger Brigade’s readiness unit take part in a helicopter training exercise in Sodankyla on Jan. 9.
The Arctic section leader of the brigade, Maj. Mikael Aikio, 39, has been an instructor at the winter combat course since it was created 10 years ago. Originally from the region, he is a quarter Sámi—an Indigenous people of northern Norway, Sweden, Finland, and northwestern Russia. He recently helped design the country-cross skis used by the Finnish Army. This year, he’s teaching 14 Finns and 15 foreign soldiers from the United States, United Kingdom, Estonia, France, and Belgium. “One of the strengths of the Finnish army is that there is a lot of initiative even at low levels,” he says in his office in the Arctic section of the base. “Squads and platoons can make decisions themselves and do things independently. That’s the culture.”
But to make good decisions autonomously, you need skills. While preparing for a day with his students, he puts some newspaper in his boots to absorb moisture. “The devil is in the details,” Aikio says while remembering a training day spent with temperatures that reached 38 degrees Fahrenheit (39 Celsius) below zero.
An instructor at the winter combat course oversees training by the Jaeger Brigade in Sodankyla on Jan. 9.
Finnish and NATO troops practice ski warfare during the Jaeger Brigade’s winter combat course in Sodankyla on Jan. 10. Their rifles are camouflaged with white tape.
A Finnish instructor teaches survival skills to U.S. Staff Sgt. Cameron Daniels during the winter combat course in Sodankyla on Jan. 9.
The brigade’s barracks are scattered across the snow-covered spruce of the Finnish taiga. In mid-January, daylight is less than three hours, but the 29 winter combat course trainees can take advantage of the high latitudes’ long twilights. One of them, Staff Sgt. Cameron Daniels, 29, arrived in Sodankyla at the beginning of January from Fort Drum, New York, where he serves in the 10th Mountain Division. The Finns equipped him with many layers beneath a surprisingly light jacket, three different kinds of gloves, and rubber boots made by a Nokia spinoff company, with a means to attach the skis. “They have excellent gear and great skills I’ll bring back home,” Daniels says, packing his bag. “Their camouflage is great.”
Daniels’s division was founded during World War II, after the U.S. Army observed, impressed, the Finnish feats against the Soviet Union. After signing the nonaggression pact with Germany in 1939, the Soviet Union had launched an offensive against Finland to increase the buffer territory around Leningrad in case of a future attack from Berlin. Then, as in today’s Ukraine, Moscow justified the invasion of the old imperial province by pretending to come to the aid of a minority in Finnish territory. Then, as today, the operation didn’t go as expected. The Red Army suffered huge losses against the Finnish troops, which were much more prepared to fight in the harsh winter conditions. The Finns were particularly effective in small units, and they had some good snipers in their ranks. The most famous of them, Simo Hayha, earned the nickname “White Death” after at least 505 confirmed kills, making him widely considered to be the deadliest marksman ever.
“After the collapse of the Soviet Union, there were hopes that Russia would move closer to Europe,” says Henrik Meinander, a history professor at the University of Helsinki. “Moreover, Finland joined the EU in 1995, and it was expected that a common European defense would be created. Nobody felt the urgency of a NATO membership.” A few steps from the campus, the statue of Tsar Alexander II dominates the capital’s main square. But Russian tourists, the most numerous in Finland before the Ukraine invasion, have almost disappeared. “If Russia had not attacked Ukraine, Finland would not have joined NATO,” Meinander says.
Finland doesn’t just bring massive infantry and ski troops to the table. The country boasts a stronger artillery than any in Western Europe, with about 1,500 weapons and substantial heavy ammunition production. In December, the Defense Ministry announced that it would more than double production to build up its own capabilities as well as to keep supplying Ukraine’s forces. Helsinki recently bought the David’s Sling high-altitude air defense system from Israel and 64 F-35s from the United States. The F-35s purchase brought the country’s expenditure on defense in 2023 above 2 percent of GDP, which is the theoretical minimum required for NATO countries but followed by only a third of the members.
Unlike Estonia or Latvia, Finland will be able to take care of its airspace by itself without the support of NATO allies. According to Sipilainen, the Ministry of Defense advisor, airspace violations from Russia were quite common before Finland joined NATO, but there have been none since then: “Clearly, there is respect for NATO airspace.”
Col. Kimmo Kinnunen, the commander of the Jaeger Brigade, poses for a portrait at the brigade’s headquarters in Sodankyla on Jan. 9.
On the other side of the border, Finland’s old enemy is struggling to maintain a solid conventional ground force. The Russian counterparts of the Jaeger Brigade, the 80th Motorized Rifle Brigade and the 200th Motorized Rifle Brigade, have suffered hefty casualties in Ukraine.
“There is not much left,” says Col. Kimmo Kinnunen, the commander of the Jaeger Brigade. “But they have a lot of other capabilities,” pointing to air and naval forces as well as the nuclear submarines based near Murmansk.
In Ivalo, the passage to Murmansk is now closed. Along the border, the situation is quiet, but the Border Guard are tight-lipped about the confrontation with Russia. “We don’t know what will happen, but I hope it will be back to normal,” says a conscript. His superior is in the room, and they exchange glances to be sure he is using appropriate words.
A soldier on skis looks at targets after a shooting exercise at the Jaeger Brigade in Sodankyla on Jan. 10.
Cpl. Topi Kinnunen, in his early 20s, has just finished his first mandatory six months of service and has now decided to start another six months to train and lead the newcomers. “I chose to come here because it is a tough place, but rewarding,” he says while the recruits come to grips with the Finnish-made RK 62 rifles, designed on the model of the Soviet Kalashnikovs.
Over the past decades, Finland has produced enough to arm its entire reserve. Soon, the armory in Ivalo could also open its doors to weapons from the Pentagon.