Comments by "LRRPFco52" (@LRRPFco52) on "OBF" channel.

Finland has huge strategic significance for Russia because it allows strategic depth to encircle the Baltics and provide more launch points for the invasion of Poland. Finland has access to the sea, and has already cut off Russian rail shipments of goods that go to other markets. Finland has the Russian wide rail network, connected to Russian railroads since the mid 1800s. Putin has planned to invade Finland since the early 2000s because like Stalin, he doesn't sit well with a Western power that close to Saint Petersburg.
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@A Y EU has encouraged Finland to remain neutral for decades. Finland just wants to be left alone when it comes to conflict, and trade with both East and West while working on domestic problems like population (lack of young workers), aging society, energy, and advanced technology development. Finland has been a reliable trade partner for Russia for centuries. My family’s region, Pohjanmaa, has been exporting bailed hay to Russia since Czarist times, and they’re in the West, opposite side of the border. When I lived in Russia, I saw several Finnish products on the large store shelves like Globus, which is a German attempt to duplicate the combined business models of Wal-Mart and Costco. Russia has enjoyed diversity of grocery, personal care, and household products like never before once the collapse’s initial velocity was reduced, and Western firms saw a huge market of 143 million people who had been excluded from Western trade for 50-60 years. Much of Russia’s domestic construction projects were managed by Finnish, Serbian, and Swedish engineers because the Bolsheviks purged those types of people in the Revolution and Civil War, followed by the horrors of human loss in World War II. Russia focused its remaining engineers, many of whom were injured during the war (Kalashnikov is one example) on military items, taking Western designs where all the RDT&E had been done already, then scaled those designs for primitive Russian and Ukrainian factories. Ukraine had better technical expertise in many areas, including missile and RADAR components, as well as most of the naval yards for construction of wartime vessels. EU has promoted trade with Russia though, since Germany is the core of the EU and Germany relies on exports for its economy. They are the last ones who want to see any warfare in Europe.
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@davidlynch9049 Russia has almost no access to the sea. That's one of their major geographic challenges. Study Russian geography more. Their biggest sea port is Novorossiysk in the Black Sea. Primorsk near Sainkt Petersburg is shallow water, can't accept heavy displacement. Murmansk and Archangyelsk are way up north in the Arctic Ocean and White Sea, icebergs in July, frozen most of the year. Then there's Vladivostok 10 time zones away in the territorial waters of Japan.
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@johnreynolds6466 Everybody loses in war. I've been deployed to multiple theaters of conflict all my life, from West Germany to Korea, ME to Panama, and my family lost multiple people when Stalin invaded Finland. 3 of my great uncles and my grandpa's youngest sister were all killed. My great uncle Lenni went missing, never seen again.
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Finland's choices: 1. Wait for eventual invasion, which Putin has planned since early 2000s. 2. Speed-up Russia's invasion by starting the official application to NATO, where Russia will invade during the period before official NATO membership, like Russia did with Georgia. It makes more strategic sense for Russia to invade Finland to create strategic depth and encircle the Baltics, then invade Poland. Putin doesn't get his info from the West, and his advisors are limited in who is able to tell him what he wants to hear. With Ukraine, they can say, "They had 43 million people and tons of weapons left over from Soviet Times. Finsky only have 5.5 million people and we can destroy their key military assets with Iskander and hypersonic missiles, which we know work very well. Here are photos of their effects in Ukraine."
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@texaswunderkind NATO HQ has been seeded with Russian moles from the beginning. Same with CIA and the West German BND, as well as British and French Intelligence services. Putin will know about any NATO membership formal applications before NATO does. He has moles in Finnish Parliament as well. Because of Russia's weak position, they have leaned heavily on having extensive intelligence assets among all their neighbors and important countries since the Czarist times.
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@stischer47 Who will be the first nation to deploy their fighters to contribute to the fight, as Iskanders and long range fires fall on the air bases and cities? Imagine attacks from Murmansk, Saint Petersburg, and Kaliningrad military districts. Any incoming support for Finland will have to fly through the Kaliningrad S-400 IADS umbrella, except from Norway or Sweden. Germany with Typhoons who have never worked with FiAF? Poland with F-16C Block 52s, leaving the door open for them to be attacked? UK from far away with their Typhoons and F-35Bs? Denmark, Netherlands, or Italy maybe? I could see Norwegians enter the fight with F-35As. But Biden would have to authorize USAF, and Biden has been on Russia's payroll since 1972. Putin can shut off the oil/NG to Germany if they get involved. I don't think this is an easy answer as people think. NATO membership involves multiple regional threat mitigation contingencies that are prepared for with regional exercises focusing on interoperability. Finland has done a bit of this, but other nations have never conducted mutual defense exercises for a Finnish scenario.
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@TaronTT Comparing Switzerland and Finland doesn't make sense geographically, but there are some similarities in defense philosophy between the 2. Switzerland enjoys being in elevated mountainous terrain that they control, so nobody messes with them.
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@johnreynolds6466 Finland is very expensive because it's a distant market with a very small population, with very long, dark, cold winters. I like living there though, and have been traveling there since 1979, have lived there long-term on 2 different times, and went there 2-4x per year between 2006-2016. I lived there from 2005-2006, as well as 2008. Lived in Russia from 2008-2009. Much of my family lives in Finland. Since Finland is getting ready to be invaded, it's not a place to look at right now. Some of us have always had the sense of when, not if.
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@johnreynolds6466 Real estate is a dead end Finland because of capital gains. We own multiple properties throughout Finland, and if you sell one, you get raped for half of each sale. The system is designed to prevent wealth accumulation so that everyone sucks equally and likes it.
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@wilfredoandaluz5571 Finland announcing formal NATO membership application now will help make Putin's decision for him to invade, before Article 5 can go into effect like he did with Georgia. Russia can then look for what they think will be an "easy win" against a tiny population of 5.5 million people in the North. Even if it mostly fails like Stalin did in 1939, it still means Iskander and hypersonic missiles streaking into Finnish cities, ports, airfields, and bases. It means waves of Russian Su-30s, Su-35s, Su-34s, Su-24s, Su-25s attacking FiAF F/A-18s and their remote basing scheme. It means MRLS rockets bombarding Finnish cities, scores of helicopters inserting airmobile infantry, equipped with a mix of captured Javelins, NLAWs, Russian thermobaric warhead rocket launchers, while tank columns try to push through Karelia.
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@Grim FPV Putin activated false flag units in 2014 to start killing ethnic Russians as a pretext for invading. Look at the timeline. What changed in Feb 2014? Yanukovych was ousted by the Ukrainian people after 4 months of protests. As soon as Putin lost his puppet, he had to escalate to a military option, hence the false flag attacks on Russians in Donetsk, just like was done with Abkhazia, Georgia, Chechnya, and what Stalin did in 1939 with Finland. Putin doesn't care about ethnic Russians in Ukraina. He cares about Ukraina gaining independence, trading their services and resources for Euros, which would have elevated Ukraina's economy over Russia's, especially after they discovered the huge oil fields just off the coast of Sevastopol and Odessa. As long as a Russian puppet was in Kiev, nye problyem. As soon as Yanukovych was thrown out, Ukraina nazis!
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@johnreynolds6466 There will be massive destruction and loss of innocent lives either way.
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@mattijussila3007 Through Kaliningrad, Baltics, and Belorussia after Finland has been taken. Getting Finland first helps form a strategic encirclement of sorts.
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@neco4114 You don't go through the border up north. There's nothing but forest there and tiny country roads. The main route into Finland is the Karelian isthmus, which is a death trap, along with naval assaults, which would all fail in the face of anti-ship missiles and coastal defense. The real problem is that even a failed Russian invasion will involve Iskander cruise missiles and TBMs that devastate civilian population centers, and cause an internal refugee displacement crisis. The FiAF has very capable F/A-18C multirole fighters, but they would suffer against S-300 and S-400 IADS, which already cover Finnish airspace. Finland needs her order of 64 F-35As, but those haven't been built yet. They aren't scheduled for delivery until several years from now. This is Putin's only window really, especially with Biden in the WH, who is a Russian plant. The Soviets paid for Biden's hopeless Senate campaign in 1972 and he has been on their payroll ever since.
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