The head of the Finnish armed forces said that Finland had been preparing for a Russian offensive for decades and would offer strong resistance if it did happen.
The Scandinavian country built a substantial arsenal. But General Timo Kivinen said that in addition to military equipment, a very important factor was the motivation of the Finns to fight.
“The most important line of defense right now is between the kulaks, as evidenced by the war in Ukraine right now,” Kivinen said in an interview. Said.
Finland fought two wars in the 1940s against its eastern neighbor, with which it shared a 1,300 km border.
The country, once a non-aligned nation, is now applying to join NATO’s military alliance amid concerns that Russia may invade in the same way that it invaded Ukraine on February 24.
Since the Second World War, Helsinki has had a high level of military preparedness.
“We have systematically developed our military defense precisely for this type of warfare, where there (in Ukraine) intense firepower, armored forces, as well as air force are used,” said Kivinen.
“Ukraine (for Russia) was a hard-to-chew bite, and so would Finland.”
In Finland’s two wars against the Soviet Union, nearly 100,000 Finns were killed and lost a tenth of their land.
The nation of 5.5 million has a fighting force of approximately 280,000, of which 870,000 are trained as reserves. Finland did not abolish conscription for men, as many other Western countries did after the end of the Cold War.
source: Noticias
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