Finland, Sweden would move NATO closer to large Russian military bases
- Sweden and Finland have submitted their applications to become NATO’s next members.
- A permit from Finland would extend NATO’s border with the Kola Peninsula, a major Russian military hub.
- Russia has spent the past decade upgrading and expanding military bases on the peninsula.
In May, Finland and Sweden jointly submitted their applications to join NATO, a historic move prompted by Russia’s attack on Ukraine.
Their likely accession to the alliance would end their decades of formal military freedom of alliance and reorganize the security environment in northern Europe.
“Finnish and Swedish membership of NATO is likely to complicate military planning for Russia, especially in the case of offensive military operations targeting NATO states in northeastern Europe,” said John Deni, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center and a researcher. professor at the US Army War College’s Strategic Studies Institute.
The addition of Finland would double NATO’s land border with Russia from 750 to 1,600 miles and expand NATO’s border with the Kola Peninsula, a critical part of Russia’s security architecture and a region that Moscow sees as a military bastion.
A submarine nest
The Kola Peninsula contains largest concentration of nuclear weapons in the world. It provides access to the Barents and North Seas and has the only ports in the Russian Arctic that are ice-free all year round.
The peninsula is home to Russia’s northern fleet, which has most of the country’s nuclear-powered submarines. The navy is an important part of Russia’s nuclear triad and other strikes nuclear power capacity.
2020, President Vladimir Putin raised the northern fleet to an independent military administrative district on a par with Russia’s four other military districts – western, southern, central and eastern – which highlight the importance of the Kola Peninsula and high north to Moscow.
The Kola Peninsula has many military bases and facilities that support the northern fleet and serve as spaces for its operations in the high north, which NATO officials say is central to Russia’s defense.
The northern fleet’s most formidable assets are its approximately 20 operational submarines, many of them nuclear-powered. Its mainstays are fourth-generation Borei-class and Yasen-class submarines.
The Borei-class nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines are some of Russia’s newest and can each carry 16 ballistic missiles and up to 96 nuclear warheads. Two submarines of the Borei class have been deployed with the northern fleet and three more are under construction and will join the fleet within the decade.
The first Yasen-class nuclear-powered submarine was commissioned in 2013 and its latest variant, the Yasen-M, was commissioned last year. The Northern Fleet has two Yasens and three more will eventually join.
Yasens carries a mix of conventional cruise missiles that can hit land or sea targets – long-range weapons that NATO officials believe Russia would likely use against ports and other infrastructure.
The majority of the Northern Fleet’s nuclear-powered submarines are stationed at the Navy’s headquarters in Severomorsk in Kola Bay. There are also submarine bases in Zaozyorsk, which is only about 600 km from Norway, in Gadzhiyevo on the Gulf of Olenya, in Zapadnaya Litsa and in Vidyaevo.
The Plesetsk Cosmodrome, which houses batteries of RS-24 Yars thermonuclear ballistic missiles, is also located on the peninsula, as well as a number of air bases that can support strategic bombers.
Nuclear support structures
In 2012, Putin ordered the modernization of Russia’s military arsenal, with priority given to its nuclear weapons. The very large concentration of such weapons on the Kola Peninsula led to a program for upgrade, expansion and modernization of the region’s naval and air force facilities.
According to a review of satellite images from 2018 by The Barents Observera Norwegian outlet based just a few miles from the Russian border, Moscow is building 50 reinforced weapons bunkers to store long-range nuclear weapons and conventional missiles on the Okolnaya Bay peninsula, which is in northern Russia. largest stockpile of weapons.
The Russian Ministry of Defense is also expanding bases on the Kola Peninsula to better support Borei-class and Yasen-class submarines.
New docking facilities and other submarine infrastructure and special loading and unloading facilities for nuclear warheads and ballistic missiles are being built at many of the peninsula’s submarine bases. remedy operational deficiencies before the northern navy’s northern fleet.
Russia is also modernizing one of the three air bases near Severomorsk. Upgrades to Severomorsk-1 air base would improve the Russian military’s awareness of the region and expand its operational reach as the Arctic becomes more accessible.
Gets cold feet
Finland and Sweden already work closely with NATO. Both are NATO Enhanced Opportunity Partners, the closest partnership a non-member can have with the Alliance, and both are part of NATO’s responsiveness. NATO membership will deepen their cooperation.
“Russia is likely to worry about NATO’s proximity to Russian forces on the Kola Peninsula during peacetime and conflict,” Deni said, adding that Finland’s membership could enable NATO to “improve its knowledge of Russian activities on the Kola Peninsula.”
Despite the importance of the peninsula for Russia, Deni was skeptical that Moscow would need to “increase its military deterrence in the north” if Sweden and Finland joined the alliance.
NATO currently has “a serious lack of offensive-oriented military capability and capabilities” in the region, Deni said. “A NATO threat to Russia certainly does not exist right now in northern Europe, even if Finland and Sweden are included in the calculation.”
“Instead, the threat from the West is constantly being inflated by the Kremlin to strengthen its own domestic position and to justify massive military spending,” Deni told Insider.
However, Russian military planning for operations in the Baltic and Arctic would be more complicated if Finland and Sweden joined NATO, as they “may be more willing and able to share information with NATO on Russian operations in these two regions,” Deni said, and reflects comments from General Christopher Cavoli, the United States’ top general in Europe.
If Sweden and Finland joined NATO, the alliance would almost completely surround the Baltic Sea, Cavoli told the Senate Defense Committee on May 26.
That fence would present “a bunch of different dilemmas, almost geometric dilemmas, that Russia does not have right now,” Cavoli said, “so it will be beneficial.”
Constantine Atlamazoglou works with transatlantic and European security. He holds a master’s degree in security studies and European affairs from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy.