Soon after Russia’s revanchist assault on Ukrainian sovereignty precipitated by the threat of Ukraine joining NATO, its foreign affairs spokesperson, Maria Zakharova, came out with the following statement: "Finland and Sweden should not base their security on damaging the security of other countries and their accession to NATO can have detrimental consequences and face some military and political consequences".
Sweden and Finland responded to Moscow’s veiled threats with the Finnish government brushing down Moscow’s dictum saying that they have heard such words before and that they don’t see this as Moscow threatening them while the Swedish Prime Minister said, “It is Sweden that itself independently decides on our security policy”. There seems to be a stark contrast in how both these nations have decided to respond to Moscow.
The origin of Finlandisation within this dynamic can be broadly traced back to the Cold War when Finland did not join NATO and enjoyed years of a relatively non-interfering stance from Moscow as a result of the Finno-Soviet Treaty of 1948. Moscow was, of course, deeply concerned with developments in Finland and did not want them to sway towards Moscow’s ideological adversaries. While a claim can be made that Moscow did influence Finland’s domestic and foreign policy, it nonetheless ‘allowed’ them to maintain their sovereignty and didn’t actively interfere in their affairs. Relations turned sour during the infamous Night Frost Crisis of 1958 when Moscow refused to accept a social democrat, Karl-August Fagerholm, as the Prime Minister of Finland.
