Russia’s Looming Threat in Northern Europe

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Russian President Vladimir Putin chairs a video-conference meeting on the development of the Arctic zone of the Russian Federation, 13th April 2022. Photo: President of Russia

Northern Europe has historically been an area of conflict between Russia and the Western world. In the Great Northern War (1700-1721), Peter the Great challenged the hegemony of the Swedish Empire to transform Russia into a great power. Today, the region once again finds itself at the centre of a renewed East-West confrontation.

Finland and Sweden – who cherished long-standing neutrality – have been swift in reacting to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. A common historical experience of Russian expansionism brought the two Nordic countries to the conclusion that Moscow poses a long-term threat far beyond Ukraine. Joining NATO was judged to be essential to counter Russia’s effort to rewrite the post-Cold War order by force. Since accession, both nations have doubled down on their role as Euro-Atlantic security providers.

In contrast to many of its European counterparts, the Finnish armed forces maintained a focus on deterrence after the end of the Cold War. This has enabled the Nordic country to play a central role in NATO’s collective security system. Finland’s defence minister, Antti Häkkänen, established a new NATO land command last year with the responsibility to lead the defence of Northern Europe in the event of war.

Sweden too has enhanced the security of the Euro-Atlantic area to a considerable degree as a NATO member. The country has one of Europe’s largest defence industrial bases that exports over $2bn in defence material. Sweden’s location on the Scandinavian peninsula also makes it strategically-important. The Swedish Navy’s first-hand understanding of the threats along a vast Baltic coastline allows NATO to improve its maritime strategy towards the region.

But perhaps more importantly, Finland and Sweden offer NATO an expansive geographical reach. Tobias Billström, who served as the Swedish foreign minister from 2022 to 2024, noted that NATO’s Nordic enlargement has the effect of binding the High North, the North Atlantic, and the Baltic regions together. This will be vital for the Alliance as it confronts a Russia that thinks more in terms of the balance of power than international norms or values.

Certain fixed geographical realities have influenced Russia’s foreign policy – whether in Tsarist, Soviet, or post-communist forms. On the Great Eurasian plain with few natural boundaries other than the Ural Mountains, Russia has sought national survival through expansion. Strange as it may seem, this inherent sense of insecurity that Russia feels still permeates its self-identity to this day.

When the Soviet Union collapsed, the Russian leadership refused to accept a United States-led international order that consigned their country to the fringes of Eastern Europe. Yevgeny Primakov – Russia’s foreign minister from 1996 to 1998 – replaced Mikhail Gorbachev’s accommodation of the West with an insistence on Moscow’s primacy in the post-Soviet space.

The influence of Primakov’s foreign policy thinking can be seen in Russia today under Vladimir Putin. A “favourable external environment that strengthens Russia’s development” has been a dominant theme of successive Kremlin documents since the start of Putin’s third term in 2012. For Russia, control of the High North plays a critical role in achieving this geopolitical objective.

The Northern Sea Route (NSR) – the trading link that stretches from the Barents Sea to the Bering Strait – offers Moscow the opportunity to offset the economic cost of reduced European Union member state imports of Russian gas. In September 2024, a Russian liquefied natural gas 2 tanker evaded sanctions by passing through the NSR for the first time. As for its security interests, Russia seeks to maintain its freedom to navigate the Barents and Norwegian Seas and the wider North Atlantic should a direct conflict with NATO break out.

Accordingly, Russia has devoted considerable attention to the defense of its vast and increasingly exposed northern boundaries. The latest Russian foreign policy concept ascribed the Arctic as a region of significant importance. Russia’s Northern Fleet in the Kola Peninsula has conducted exercises to warn NATO of its sea denial capabilities in the Greenland-Iceland-UK gap. Russia will rely more and more on its Arctic nuclear deterrent to project power as it continues to suffer losses in Ukraine.

Norway has become increasingly concerned with the emergence of great-power competition and the heightened risk of miscalculation in the High North. Last year, the Norwegian government launched its long-term defence plan that prioritises operational ability and situational awareness along its 83,281 km-long coastline. As part of the proposals, Norway has said that it will spend NOK 600bn (€50.9bn) on defense over the next decade.

Other NATO allies will need to follow Norway’s example and build a credible defense and deterrence posture suited to the long-term threat that Russia poses. Although the 2022 Strategic Concept identifies Russia as “the most significant and direct threat”, it is not clear whether Nato is prepared for Russia’s systemic threat. The current 2 percent minimum threshold for defense spending appears insufficient to achieve the “forward defence” capabilities needed to deter Moscow from attacking NATO territory.

Mark Rutte, the NATO Secretary-General, warned in December that the Alliance was falling short to meet the challenge of a “long-term confrontation” with Russia. The Russian economy has shifted to a war-time mode with a third of its state budget allocated towards defense in 2025.

In a sign that it is already testing the credibility of NATO’s Article 5, Moscow has turned to hybrid warfare. Finland believes that Moscow is behind an increasing number of non-kinetic campaigns. These malign activities are elaborate and comprehensive, ranging from sabotage to the instrumentalisation of migration to interference in maritime navigation systems in the Baltic Sea.

The rupture in Russia-NATO relations will last for the foreseeable future as Moscow prepares itself militarily to achieve its geopolitical aims. In this new security situation, the High North can no longer be seen as a separate entity from the Euro-Atlantic space. NATO must find a way to balance the need to deter Russia with maintaining peace and stability in the Arctic.

Hugo Blewett-Mundy is an associate research fellow at the EUROPEUM Institute for European Policy in Prague. His research interests include Russia, Eastern Europe, and foreign policy. He also writes regularly about foreign affairs for EUobserver in Brussels. Hugo holds an MA in Russian and Post-Soviet Politics from the UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies in London.