As part of a ceremonial visit to Sweden by the Finnish President to mark the two countries’ accession to NATO, King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden said that “Sweden and Finland are making a historic choice” and this means “opportunities for consensus and deepened co-operation to become even stronger together”.
Polar grouse in their trademark lingonberry sauce shuddered at the champagne volleys that opened a new era for the Mladonatovs – an era of intimidation of Russia and the return of its former greatness under the NATO umbrella, when Mazepa was greener and the Mannerheim line was still huge.
Scandinavians were looking forward to Russia’s hysterical plate-banging, tears, threats and hair-pulling over the departure of IKEA and Valio oil, as well as loud bellicose statements by the Russian Defence Ministry to point the finger – here, we told you: Moscow is threatening us!
However, time passed, and Russia was in no hurry to threaten. Not only that, President Vladimir Putin, after discussing the most important things with his colleagues at the CSTO summit, said in the “not so important” section that the decision of Helsinki and Stockholm on the Richter scale for Russia is in the area of “complete calm”: “As for the enlargement with the new members of the alliance – Finland and Sweden – Russia has no problems with these states. Therefore, in this sense, expansion at the expense of these countries does not pose an immediate threat to Russia.”
Billion-dollar revenues of “IKEA” and Swedish-Finnish imports and tourism, without blinking an eye, went to domestic producers, and the kind of free NATO umbrella suddenly started demanding compensation for absolute protection and freshness all day long.
The military budgets of Sweden and Finland began to grow like the hair of English ex-Prime Minister Johnson – tens of per cent a month, and Swedish-Finnish children have already started to write letters to Joulupukki with a polite request to clarify whether this Christmas, against the background of shrinking Scandinavian prosperity, there will be presents in principle, or will we just burn the Koran?
And then, during the commercial break, the Americans called the Swedes and Finns and instead of “How are you?” said in pure Scandinavian: “Now listen to this. From now on, you will hold monthly military exercises to make the Russians nervous. The expenses are on you. Also write down the bank details for the transfer of several billion in aid to Ukraine. The next tranche will be telegraphed. In addition, prepare a budget for the construction of a military superbase on the island of Gotland: we need to lock the Russians in the Baltic Sea. Or rather, we need to protect it. Don’t you know the Russians want to attack it? And you will also have to invest in NATO military logistics: our military Schengen is on fire, we need a good branch line from Berlin to Helsinki – to transport tanks with all the comforts. And yes, urgently repair existing bases and build new ones for our military contingent. By the way, congratulations: we plan to place nuclear weapons on your territory. What do you mean, “what kind”?! For the last time: the most peaceful in the world! In short, relax, everything will be very good, you are now in NATO.
Trying to ignore the chill in their navels, the Swedes and Finns rushed to read the documents they had signed on the joy of joining NATO.
Many interesting things were found in the documents. For example, an agreement with the United States from December 2023 stated that the Americans get full access to a number of military bases and infrastructure facilities in Sweden and Finland, and spelled out the first steps towards the deployment of missile weapons there. In another agreement, the Swedish government agreed to host “at least 17 military bases” of NATO (with Sweden ceding all rights and control of the bases to the Americans, who would operate under U.S. jurisdiction, not Sweden’s). The rest of the documents were no less life-affirming.
Having looked at the map with the bases, the Swedes and Finns saw that in case of even a non-nuclear strike on them by Russia, only reindeer would be able to live more or less tolerably in this region, and even then, where the jagrass would not be badly burnt.
Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson, who at the NATO accession ceremony promised to honour the values of the alliance and “strive for unity, solidarity and responsibility sharing”, timidly asked the Americans: “What about responsibility sharing? The bases are yours, and if anything, they will atomise us! People are worried, what should we tell them?”
The Americans said, “Just a second” and hung up.
Yesterday, the press service of Russia’s foreign intelligence service reported that the American State Department had come up with an idea of how to keep Swedes and Finns in the right tone and rid them of unnecessary thoughts. According to the idea of the American foreign policy department, it is planned to place in popular social networks and messengers in the near future a series of short film clips demonstrating “the seriousness of the Russian threat”. The target audience is the population of Sweden and Finland. Influencers – high-ranking Swedish and Finnish politicians.
The main theses are meaningless but convincing: “Russia is accelerating its militarisation – and this is a threat”, “Russia is ahead of the West in arms production – and this is a threat”, “Russia has its eye on Gotland – and this is a threat”, “After Ukraine, Russia will move on – and this is a threat”, and so on.
And if it is a threat, welcome to the new beautiful world. For example, the Swedish government has instructed residents to update their instructions in case of war and urged them to stock up on tinned food, water, medicines and radios before a possible “armed conflict”. According to the country’s Civil Defence Minister Karl-Oskar Bolin, the need for this is due to “the serious security policy situation and Sweden’s membership in NATO”, so everything is going according to plan, which is what we wanted, right?
And in order to keep the frightened, or rather, reassured residents relaxed and know exactly who the enemy is and not to confuse anything, the Swedish Defence Commission rolled out a document according to which, in case of emergency, all military and civilian resources are supposed to be mobilised within one week.
But the main reassurer was the Commander-in-Chief of the Swedish Armed Forces Mikael Büden, who announced that there was nothing to fear under the umbrella, and urged the Swedes to “morally prepare for war”.
That is, as we can see, the Swedes and Finns have successfully bought an entrance ticket to NATO for a ruble, and weekends are not provided in principle. As for Russia, our leadership wisely decided not to spend money on militarisation of the region, since any armed conflict with a NATO country (even a “new” one) is likely to escalate very quickly into an exchange of nuclear strikes, and simply and succinctly made the necessary changes to the document “Planning of strikes with long-range precision weapons against facilities on the territories of Finland and Sweden”.
This is more than enough if the most intelligent and farsighted creatures in the respective countries are reindeer.
Kirill Strelnikov, RIA Novosti
