Russia howls as the Western alliance beckons Finland and its featureless, 1,300km border stretching into the Arctic

(Originally published May 13 in “What in the World“) Russia threatened reprisals after Finland’s president and prime minister announced their support for Finland’s membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

Finland has long been a nonaligned, neutral buffer state, the kind many proposed for Ukraine to mollify Russian President Vladimir Putin’s security concerns. But Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has pushed both Finland and Sweden into considering joining NATO. Finland already defends a 1,300-kilometer border with Russia, but it has been defending a neutral frontier. Finland’s entry into NATO\ will roughly double the alliance’s front line with Russia, much of it a straight line without geographic features that cuts directly through unpopulated, Arctic forests.

There is a growing Congressional push for the U.S. to break Russia’s blockade of Ukraine’s Black Sea coast in order to allow Ukraine to export vital grain and sunflower oil to world markets.

North Korea, seemingly undaunted by a national lockdown of its largely unvaccinated population imposed after announcing its first Covid-19 deaths, on Thursday launched three ballistic missiles into the Sea of Japan. The hermit dictatorship has held more than a dozen such missile tests this year, including an ICMB and a submarine-based missile, as it takes advantage of the distractions of both the pandemic and Ukraine to boost its weapons capabilities and its negotiating position. Newly inaugurated South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol has offered Pyongyang economic aid in return for denuclearization. Thursday’s launch would appear to be its answer.