Medvedev accuses Finland of preparing for war with Russia

Former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev has accused neighbouring Finland of pursuing a course of war against Russia – and has renewed claims for reparations for World War II.

“After joining NATO, Helsinki is pursuing a course of confrontation in preparation for war with Russia under the pretext of defence measures and is apparently preparing a bridgehead for an attack on us,” Medvedev, who is still influential as deputy head of the National Security Council, wrote in a column for the state news agency TASS.

Medvedev complained that staff structures for army units were being created in Lapland “in the immediate vicinity of the Russian border.”

It was clear who these structures were directed against, as NATO had declared Russia an enemy, he wrote. The column itself is entitled: “Finland’s new doctrine: Stupidity, lies, ingratitude.”

The Finns’ security endeavours following the Russian invasion of Ukraine are perceived as ungrateful in Moscow. Finland, which was neutral for decades after World War II, joined NATO together with Sweden as a reaction to the start of the Ukraine war.

Medvedev now sees this as an opportunity to renew old demands for reparations, claiming that the new Finnish policy tramples on old agreements.

Moscow is therefore no longer bound by the peace treaty of 1947, which limited Soviet reparation claims to $300 million: Medvedev argued the damage actually caused by Finland during World War II amounted to 20 trillion roubles ($244 billion), he claimed.

Finland took part in the war against the Soviet Union alongside Hitler’s Germany in 1941. The Finns saw this as a continuation of the Winter War launched by the Soviet Union in 1939, in which Moscow annexed large areas of Finland.

To this day, the 1939 Winter War following the Hitler-Stalin Pact is just as rarely discussed in Russian historiography as the annexation of the Baltic States carried out by Moscow at the time.

In this context, Medvedev wrote that Finland was just as responsible for World War II as Germany.