In NATO’s New North, Fresh Chances To Contain Moscow

News Staff

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In NATO’s New North, Fresh Chances To Contain Moscow

TORNIO, Finland/KARLSKRONA, Sweden, July 3 (Reuters) – High above a railway bridge spanning a foaming river just outside the Arctic Circle, Finnish construction workers hammer away at a project that will smooth the connections from NATO’s Atlantic coastline in Norway to its new border with Russia.

“We will be removing some 1,200 of these one by one,” says site manager Mika Hakkarainen, holding up a rivet.

Until February 2022, the 37-million euro ($41 million) electrification of this short stretch of rail – the only rail link between Sweden and Finland – simply promised locals a chance to catch a night train down to the bright lights of Stockholm.

As the alliance reshapes its strategy in response to Russia’s campaign, access to these new territories and their infrastructure opens ways for allies to watch and contain Moscow, and an unprecedented chance to treat the whole of northwest Europe as one bloc, nearly two dozen diplomats and military and security experts told Reuters.

“PUT RUSSIA AT RISK”

The Finnish rail improvements around Tornio on the Swedish border are one example. Due for completion next year, they will make it easier for allies to send reinforcements and equipment from across the Atlantic to Kemijarvi, an hour’s drive from the Russian border and seven hours from Russia’s nuclear bastion and military bases near Murmansk in the Kola peninsula.

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Among forces based there, Russia’s Northern Fleet includes 27 submarines, more than 40 warships, around 80 fighter planes and stocks of nuclear warheads and missiles, data collected by the Finnish Institute of International Affairs (FIIA) shows.

In a military conflict with NATO, the Fleet’s main task would be to secure control of the Barents Sea and stop ships bringing reinforcements from North America to Europe through the waters between Greenland, Iceland and the UK.

That’s something Finland can help NATO resist.

“It’s all about containing those kinds of capabilities from the north,” retired U.S. Major General Gordon B. Davis Jr. told Reuters.