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Finland's former prime minister says Russia could retaliate against his country for joining NATO, bu
Finland's former prime minister said Russia could target his country for joining NATO, but that it was well prepared for such a scenario.
Alexander Stubb, Finland's prime minister between 2014 and 2015, has long pushed for Finland to join the military alliance.
In a phone interview with Insider on Thursday, he spoke about how Finland is now closer than ever to joining thanks to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, and how Russia may respond to its membership.
Stubb noted that Putin had previously threatened NATO with "military-technical measures," meaning a mixture of cyber and more conventional military attacks.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/finlands-former-prime-minister-says-104759936.html
They'd have to take on all of NATO.
4 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
= new reply since forum marked as read
A short story
By Arna Bontemps Hemenway
Simo Häyhä, whose life this story imaginatively elaborates on, was a renowned sniper during the Winter War between Finland and the Soviet Union. The fighting, which began in November 1939 and ended in a Russian victory in mid-March, was fiercest along Finland’s eastern border, in Karelia.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/08/wolves-of-karelia/592810/
https://archive.ph/w36l8
DISTANCE
“Do you see?” my father said.
I breathed in and out, the air shallow in my chest. I was 10. On the way back from his dawn hunt, my father had sliced the tip off a reindeer antler and placed it somewhere in the array of space and field behind our cabin. My job was to find it. We were on our stomachs in the snow, under the stand of trees where, in summer, our horse Teemu lowered his gray face in the shade. We’d been here for two hours, waiting while I looked and looked for the tip, which would be our target.
“Yes?” my father said.
I nodded.
“Where?”
“The fang,” I said. This was the shattered birch trunk that had split the year before last in a storm and now stood, jagged and lonely, at the edge of the far field. “Well, five steps before it.”
“How far from our position?” he said. He would aim only and exactly as I instructed. Such was his test.
“One hundred forty-eight meters,” I said.
My father turned his round, dull eyes to me. “You’re sure?”
I nodded.
“Go mark it, then,” he said, and moved the rifle from where it lay between us.
Progress was slow in the snow. As I approached the fang, the sun hit the ice covering the old silver wood and made it sharp with light. I turned and faced the place I knew my father was, though you’d never be able to see him, not if you looked for a whole month. I counted five steps back toward him and stopped.
The shot rang like a bell in the frozen clearing that pocketed the cabin and the shed and our two fields. The spray of ice shards hit my face so hard that I fell backwards, and I stared at the place where the bullet had obliterated the tiny piece of antler, poking maybe five centimeters above the snow, just between my feet. If I’d said 149 meters, or taken six steps instead of five, my father’s round would’ve passed through my stomach.
When I got back to the cabin, he was already inside, the rifle half-disassembled.
“One hundred forty-eight meters,” he said, and glanced at me before going back to wiping the bolt, which was as close as he ever got to good cheer. Then he said what he always said. “You’re only wrong once, Simuna.”
THE WHITE DEATH.......
snip
By Arna Bontemps Hemenway
Simo Häyhä, whose life this story imaginatively elaborates on, was a renowned sniper during the Winter War between Finland and the Soviet Union. The fighting, which began in November 1939 and ended in a Russian victory in mid-March, was fiercest along Finland’s eastern border, in Karelia.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/08/wolves-of-karelia/592810/
https://archive.ph/w36l8
DISTANCE
“Do you see?” my father said.
I breathed in and out, the air shallow in my chest. I was 10. On the way back from his dawn hunt, my father had sliced the tip off a reindeer antler and placed it somewhere in the array of space and field behind our cabin. My job was to find it. We were on our stomachs in the snow, under the stand of trees where, in summer, our horse Teemu lowered his gray face in the shade. We’d been here for two hours, waiting while I looked and looked for the tip, which would be our target.
“Yes?” my father said.
I nodded.
“Where?”
“The fang,” I said. This was the shattered birch trunk that had split the year before last in a storm and now stood, jagged and lonely, at the edge of the far field. “Well, five steps before it.”
“How far from our position?” he said. He would aim only and exactly as I instructed. Such was his test.
“One hundred forty-eight meters,” I said.
My father turned his round, dull eyes to me. “You’re sure?”
I nodded.
“Go mark it, then,” he said, and moved the rifle from where it lay between us.
Progress was slow in the snow. As I approached the fang, the sun hit the ice covering the old silver wood and made it sharp with light. I turned and faced the place I knew my father was, though you’d never be able to see him, not if you looked for a whole month. I counted five steps back toward him and stopped.
The shot rang like a bell in the frozen clearing that pocketed the cabin and the shed and our two fields. The spray of ice shards hit my face so hard that I fell backwards, and I stared at the place where the bullet had obliterated the tiny piece of antler, poking maybe five centimeters above the snow, just between my feet. If I’d said 149 meters, or taken six steps instead of five, my father’s round would’ve passed through my stomach.
When I got back to the cabin, he was already inside, the rifle half-disassembled.
“One hundred forty-eight meters,” he said, and glanced at me before going back to wiping the bolt, which was as close as he ever got to good cheer. Then he said what he always said. “You’re only wrong once, Simuna.”
THE WHITE DEATH.......
snip
