But also a country with a history of coming to terms with the USSR, and notably one that didn't receive a NATO membership invitation guarantee (working of Wikipedia). Ukraine and Georgia did, both also want to join NATO. Finland has no such plans (again, working of Wikipedia).
Having just watched the Finnish president and prime minister address the situation, the press' pressing questions about joining NATO were continually downplayed, as is customary.
Finland is almost militantly neutral, since that was the original condition to independence in the first place. On the other hand, Russia just voided the Minsk agreement with Ukraine to attack, so...
Imagine being Russia's border neighbor, man. It's seriously stressful.
But if any country is prepared for russian invasion, it's Finland.
> Finland is almost militantly neutral, since that was the original condition to independence in the first place.
Finland a long time ago voided/broke the Paris peace treaty on their own. Basically once the Germany unified in 1990 Finland went "nope we don't like this peace treaty anymore".
If Finland was still following the treaty we would not be allowed to have aircraft that can deploy bombs, mere than 60 planes (including civilian airfact registered to Finland), more than 34k total infantry+border guard, 10k tons total displacement of navy, no sea mines or torpedoes. Finland has gone way past these since.
The only part of the Paris peace treaty we still follow is the no nukes part and that due to signing a separate treaty about not getting nukes in the 70s.
Being a border nation with Russia now, without a staunch pro-Russian government, is pretty scary right now. Even if you are a NATO member, because I don't trust NATO to go to war with Russia.
Why do you think Russia would attack NATO member? War has its own costs, Russia probably has some calculation. I don't think we will see any combat from Russian sides, at least on NATO member.
At least Finland doesn't, to my knowledge, have a meaningful amount of Russian population to "liberate". Compared to countries that used to be soviet republics, I'd say they are relatively safe.
