Eli Lake, Columnist

Finland’s Plan to Prevent Russian Aggression

The country cooperates with NATO, but Finnish President Sauli Niinisto says the nation is not ready to join the alliance.

June 12, 2019 at 7:00 AM UTC

By Eli Lake

Eli Lake is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering national security and foreign policy. He was the senior national security correspondent for the Daily Beast and covered national security and intelligence for the Washington Times, the New York Sun and UPI.

He has to do one of Europe’s most delicate balancing acts.
Photographer: Bloomberg/Bloomberg

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Finnish President Sauli Niinisto is a careful man. He has to be: His country shares an 830-mile border with one of the world’s great predators, Russia. And unlike other small states across the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea, Finland is not a member of NATO, the alliance meant to counter the Russian threat.

As he sat down for an interview this week at the president’s residence in Helsinki, Niinisto pointed to special shades on the windows to prevent sensors from recording his conversations. “The walls have ears,” he joked. At any rate, I was not allowed to bring my laptop.