I wonder what's the story with these drone strikes on the Murmansk region, which Ukrainians have apparently successfully carried out a few times in recent months. It's been speculated that the strikes may have been carried out via Finland or Norway, explaining how a Ukrainian drone has managed to strike Russian base at 1700 km distance from their border more than once.
According to Moscow Times:
Given the vast distance that drones would need to travel to reach a region as far away from Ukraine as Murmansk, pro-Kremlin media have started to claim that the drones had flown from nearby Norway or Finland.
However, experts told The Moscow Times they doubt that the Nordic NATO members are being used as launching grounds for Ukrainian drone attacks on northern Russia.
“Finnish authorities not only wouldn’t approve of such an attack, but would try to disrupt it by all means possible,” Israel-based military expert David Sharp said, noting that such a move could risk bringing the Nordic country into direct conflict with Russia.
“Finland doesn’t want to get involved in this war. Therefore, organizing a drone attack from Finnish territory is theoretically possible, but only without the involvement of the Finnish authorities,” Sharp added.
That's not really true, since Finland is already deeply involved in the war, just like all the other US vassal states. And it depends what authorities we're talking about. Sure, likely at official government level they wouldn't be willing to go there, but the army and intelligence operatives cooperating with Nato, that's different story, these type of shenanigans are part of the playbook. Another possibility could be
saboteurs inside Russia.
Whatever the case may be, the Finnish political elite have surely gone off the rails with their irrational hate towards Russia, while mainstream media is gaslighting the public with their nonsensical talking points how "Russian misinformation is aiming to create confusion and discord in the population blablabla".
Although it's mosty just empty can rattling and bizarre self-defeating economic decisions that have become virtue signaling competition, just like elsewhere in Europe. A fitting symbol of this is the Hartwall arena in Helsinki that has been closed due to sanctions (main owners are two Russian businessmen), and now the city has shut down the electricity, which means the building (which cost 70M euros to build at the time) may be successible to damage due to insufficent heating etc. Take that Putin!
While ago Finnish MEP Pekka Toveri (retired major general who is famous from his epically failed Ukraine war forecasts) stated that "Finland is already at war with Russia", so many politicians are quite arrogant with their statements, and of course president Stubb is doing everything to poke the bear, as few days ago he gave short interview to CNN, where he reiterates his orwellian
"war is peace" logic by asking for US to "
release the long range missiles".
But again, talk is talk, so I don't think Russians are putting too much weight on the barking of these tiny 'chihuahuas', though at the same time things are escalating in Ukraine, and West seems to try to get certain response from Russia.
What the European leaders apparently don't understand is that when the Ukraine is wrecked beyond the point if no possibility to continue the war, (which is closing in) the US will abandon them in a heartbeat and leave the aftermath for the weakened EU.
50 Swedish soldiers...