Finland model offers pragmatic way forward for Ukraine and Russia on Nato and EU

It looks increasingly unlikely that Russia and Ukraine will get everything they want out of negotiations

Instead of a forced neutrality along the lines of Finlandisation, current-day Finland, which maintains neutrality while being a European Union member, offers an example to follow

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Nicholas Ross Smith

Nicholas Ross Smith is an adjunct fellow at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand.

Published: 10:15am, 10 Mar 2022

Before Russia declared war on Ukraine, one frequently mentioned solution to the question of Ukraine’s troubled position between West and East was adopting something akin to what Finland adopted during the Cold War.

Under the leadership of its prime minister Juho Kusti Paasikivi, Finland signed an agreement with the Soviet Union that, among other things, recognised Finnish neutrality in the context of great-power conflict and that Finland could not adopt foreign policies contrary to the interests of the Soviet Union. The reward for these concessions was that Finland could remain politically and economically free.

Finlandisation, as this strategy became known, achieved Paasikivi’s main goal of ensuring Finland remained nominally independent, although not to the same level as, say, Yugoslavia. Despite the shadow of the Soviet Union causing significant self-censorship, Finland flourished both politically and economically.

Even so, the period of Finlandisation is a sensitive topic for the Finns and many in and outside Finland view it as a sad capitulation. Finlandisation is certainly a gamble that gives up agency in return for promised stability, and such stability is still heavily contingent on the greater power being credible in its promises.