Finland has Turkey’s approval and can at last join NATO

IN WINTER THENATO snow outside Suomussalmi, a town 600km (370 miles) north of Helsinki, lies a metre deep. Step off the road and you sink to your thighs, as the Soviet army’s 44th Rifle Division found when it invaded Finland during the Winter War of 1939-40. Once its 14,000 men, 530 trucks and 44 tanks had passed the border village of Raate, the Finns blew up its lead and rear vehicles. For weeks, while the trapped column froze and starved, Finnish ski troops in white camouflage glided through the woods slicing it to bits. The division’s commander struggled back to Soviet lines, where commissars had him shot.Most Soviet soldiers were Russian, but those on the Raate road were Ukrainian. Some 82 years later, Ukrainians fighting for their own country would trap and smash a Russian army on a motorway north of Kyiv using much the same tactics the Finns had. Finland reacted with a shock of recognition. It abandoned its policy of military neutrality, first forced on it by the Soviets, and . Its neutral neighbour Sweden did the same.