IMATRA (AFP) – In her wood, snow-covered home 20 minutes from Russia, Ms Maija Poyhia wears a standard blue headband that her mom carried together with her when fleeing the Soviet invasion of Finland throughout World War II.
In Finland, Russia’s assault on Ukraine has stirred up some painful associations with the 1939 Winter War, when Red Army troops attacked the Nordic nation throughout their shared border, which now runs to 1,340km.
As in Ukraine, the smaller Finnish military again then put up robust resistance and inflicted heavy losses on the Soviets.
But Finland ended up ceding an enormous stretch of its jap Karelia province, driving nearly half one million Finns – 12 per cent of your entire inhabitants – from their properties.
“My dad’s childhood home is still on the Finnish side,” Ms Poyhia tells AFP, though her mom’s household farm is now in Russia. “But back then, no one really understood how the border went.”
A second battle towards the USSR adopted, from 1941 to 1944, this time with Finland in a de facto alliance with Nazi Germany.
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In spite of the world’s historical past, Ms Poyhia and her husband, Mr Seppo Laaksovirta, “are not scared at all” of dwelling so near the Russian border, and the specter of one other invasion feels distant.
“I don’t know anyone around here who’s been saying we need to be on our toes,” Mr Laaksovirta says.
Russia’s shock invasion of Ukraine on Feb 24 led to a spike in Finnish assist for becoming a member of Nato as a defence towards attainable aggression from the east, with polls displaying file ranges in favour of membership.
Mr Laaksovirta helps becoming a member of the army alliance, a transfer he believes “would be of more use than harm”.
“Nowadays, we’ve got arms from America and the West here,” he provides, “rather than what we had in the 1960s, which was from Russia.”
