Finland, Sweden, and Norway to Build a Railway to Transport Troops and Weaponry to Russian Border

Executive Summary:

• Finland and Sweden joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in part as a response to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, prompting a Scandinavian defense overhaul.
• This overhaul includes plans released in June 2024 for a railway to transport NATO troops from Norway through Sweden to the Finnish border with Russia.
• Finland’s rail plans face major logistical and financial challenges, including track gauge conversion from Russian to European standards, with costs exceeding $15 billion.
• Russia is responding to Finland and Sweden’s NATO accession with a military buildup at the Finnish border, reinstating the Leningrad Military District, deploying missile brigades, and upgrading its bases.

Finland, Sweden, and Norway are now planning to construct a railway from Finland, through Sweden, to the ice-free Norwegian port of Narvik, enabling the transportation of NATO troops to the Scandinavian border with Russia. Finland’s government has allocated 20 million euros ($22.7 million) for planning the railway, with the entire multi-year project’s eventual cost estimated at several billion euros (Iltalehti, April 23; Helsinki Times, April 25). In the aftermath of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Finland and Sweden joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in 2023 and 2024, respectively. Finland’s accession doubled the length of NATO’s border with Russia from 754 miles to 1,584 miles. Unsurprisingly, Russia is responding to NATO militarization in Scandinavia.

Finland, Norway, and Sweden agreed to create a transport corridor for the transfer of NATO troops to Finland’s border with Russia on June 20, 2024. Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre announced the decision following a meeting with his Swedish counterpart, Ulf Kristersson, and Finnish President Alexander Stubb (Rossiiskaya Gazeta, June 20, 2024). Five months later, in November 2024, Finland’s Minister of Transport and Communications, Lulu Ranne, said, “Tanks and cannons must be moved in every situation” (Iltalehti, April 23; RT, April 26). The railway’s construction is expected to continue well into the 2030s. The European Union will finance up to 50 percent of the railway’s planning and about 30 percent of its construction (Vesti, May 14).

Finland’s military supply routes are currently vulnerable, underlining the importance of the proposed railway for NATO. According to Brigadier Anders Jernberg of the Norwegian Armed Forces Logistics Organization (FLO):

We must be prepared for war … Today, Finland receives 90 percent of its defense equipment from transport via the Baltic Sea. If this sea area is closed—and that is what the Armed Forces must take into account—five million citizens in Finland will depend on transport via Norway and Sweden (Teknisk Ukeblad, February 4).

While FLO initially wants to prioritize roads and bridges, it hopes to extend the Northern Norway Railway (Nord-Norgebanen) from Bodø and possibly expand the Ofot Railway (Ofotbanen) to the border with Finland. Finnish President Alexander Stubb echoed Jernberg’s remarks, emphasizing the seriousness of “allied reinforcements that in a possible crisis situation will arrive in Norway and will continue into Sweden and further toward Finland. If the Baltic Sea area is blocked, this is the only route in and out for support to Finland” (Nordnorsk Debatt, March 6).

One unavoidable issue affecting the railway project is differing gauge sizes—the distance between the two rails of a railway track—throughout Europe. The European Union’s Trans-European Transport Network (TEN-T) Regulation will enter into force next summer. It includes requirements for EU countries to transition to a standardized 1,435-millimeter (mm) track gauge. Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Ukraine all use a 1,524 mm track gauge, the standard used in the Russian Empire in the 19th century when much of the track was built (European Commission, accessed May 27).

In May, Ranne announced the Finnish government’s intention to convert its rail networks to the European 1,435 mm gauge, with alterations to begin north of Oulu (Yle, May 13). Finland made this conversion a priority because Russian railway gauges would facilitate Russian military movement in the event of an invasion, and the wider gauges are a barrier to European integration. In an impressive show of Scandinavian solidarity on transport issues, Ranne made her announcement during a press conference of the Nordic Transport Ministers in Helsinki, attended by Swedish Minister of Infrastructure and Housing Andreas Carlson, Icelandic Minister of Infrastructure Eyjolfur Armannsson, Danish Minister of Transport Thomas Nolsöe Danielsen, and Norwegian Minister of Transport Jon-Ivar Nygård.

Finland’s switch to the European rail gauge will be expensive. Russian National Research Center for Transportation and Infrastructure President Pavel Ivankin estimated that the conversion would cost Finland $15.62 billion to $20.65 billion (14 to 18.5 billion euros), and could take from two to four years, depending on funding and the resolution of technical issues (RIA Novosti, June 3, 2024).

NATO’s interim transportation route, established before the railway gauge changeover in Finland, connects Haparanda, Sweden, to Tornio, Finland, along the Torne River. The two towns are connected via a bridge with a dual-gauge track, featuring Swedish 1,435 mm and Finnish 1,524 mm lines in a four-rail gauntlet track formation. Freight is currently transferred to a 1,524 mm track at Haparanda for shipment to Finland.

The Finnish Defense Forces participated in NATO’s Norwegian-led exercise, Nordic Response 24, from March 4 to 15, 2024. The exercise, conducted by NATO in northern Finland, Norway, and Sweden, marked the first time Finland participated in regional collective defense as a NATO member (Puolustusvoimat, accessed May 27). Nordic Response 24 included 20,000 soldiers from 13 participating countries.

Two months later, during the Immediate Response 24 exercise, several hundred U.S. soldiers and military vehicles moved from Narvik in Norway to Finland through northern Sweden, the first time Sweden conducted host nation support as a NATO member (High North News, May 8, 2024). The exercise included several firsts for the U.S. military, including the use of the seaports in Narvik and Kalundborg, the deployment of a light brigade combat team to the Nordic region, and a rail gauge change in which hundreds of U.S. military vehicles were unloaded at Sweden’s Haparanda rail yard for transfer onto Finnish railway wagons in Tornio (U.S. Army Europe and Africa, April 30, 2024).

The Scandinavian rail link is not the only NATO railway project along Russia’s western borders. The Rail Baltica project plans to construct a double-track, high-speed railway from Estonia, through Latvia and Lithuania, to Poland. Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania joined NATO in 2004 as part of the largest increase in NATO membership since the alliance’s founding in 1949 (Notre Dame International Security Center, March 8, 2024).

Rail Baltica will ensure standardized and uninterrupted railway connections with the rest of NATO by connecting the capitals of the Baltic states with Europe’s 1,435 mm railway network (Kontekst.lv, April 9, 2024). Rail Baltica’s backers are concerned by its rising price, as its estimated final cost has increased from $6.23 billion (5.8 billion euros) in 2017 to $25.5 billion (23.8 billion euros) in 2023. The project is at least five years behind schedule, with the first phase scheduled for completion in 2030 (Kas Jauns, June 12, 2024).

Funding for military mobility represents a new form of support for EU member states, resulting in transport infrastructure that offers both civilian and military benefits. Predating the beginning of Russia’s February 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the European Union’s budget for 2021–2027 allocated about $1.88 billion (1.737 billion euros) to the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) for military mobility (Global Railway Review, January 29, 2024).

The Soviet and post-Communist Russian militaries relied heavily on their railways, mainly laid from east to west, to connect Russia with the former Soviet republics. From the outset of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the Russian military has used local Ukrainian supply routes, facilitated by the fact that Ukraine’s railways, built during the Soviet era, have the same 1,520 mm gauge as those in the Russian Federation (The Moscow Times, May 13).

Russia is intensifying its military activities along its frontier with Finland, particularly in the Karelian Isthmus, in response to the NATO military buildup in Scandinavia. Russia is constructing new railway lines along its borders with Finland and Norway, as well as south of St. Petersburg on the border with Estonia, while also expanding existing railway lines (Meduza, April 28).

The Leningrad Military District (LVO), which the Russian military reinstated in early 2024, borders Finland, Latvia, and Estonia (see EDM, February 29, 2024). In April 2024, Russia’s Ministry of Defense announced the formation of a new missile brigade in Karelia, part of the LVO. The new missile brigade is equipped with an Iskander-M operational-tactical missile system, which has been battle-tested during the full-scale invasion of Ukraine and is intended to repel a possible attack from Finland (Topwar.ru, April 19, 2024). The new missile unit entered the LVO with two army corps—the 11th Army Corps is stationed in Kaliningrad oblast, and the 14th Army Corps is located in Murmansk oblast. The brigade’s 51 pieces of Iskander-M equipment include self-propelled launchers, transport and loading vehicles, missiles, an integrated automated control system, technical condition monitoring equipment, and a data preparation point (Topwar.ru, April 19, 2024). The former commander of the Baltic Fleet, Admiral Vladimir Valuev, had a simple explanation for the brigade’s deployment, saying, “The formation of the missile brigade is a response to Finland’s accession to NATO” (Black Sea News, April 23, 2024). Other equipment sent to the LVO includes new 2S43 Malva self-propelled guns, recently identified on a railway platform in Petrozavodsk, which were probably intended for training the crews of the LVO’s newly formed unit (www1.ru, April 26).

Many analysts believe that re-establishing the LVO, which was abolished during the military reform of the early 2010s, indicates that Russia could be preparing for a conflict with NATO. Until 2024, Russia’s entire western border region was designated as the Western Military District (ZVO). On February 26, 2024, Russian President Vladimir Putin issued a decree dividing the ZVO into two districts: the Moscow Military District (MVO), which will control the border with Ukraine and Poland, and the LVO, responsible for the north-eastern border with NATO (Ofitsialnoe Opublikovanie Pravovikh Aktov, February 26, 2024; see EDM, February 29, 2024).

The Kremlin published a new map of Russia’s military districts on March 5, 2024, on the Russian Defense Ministry website, delineating the LVO and MVO (Fontanka.ru, March 5, 2024). Then-Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu stated during a conference call that the LVO was expressly created in response to the buildup of NATO military forces near Russia’s borders, particularly in light of Finland and Sweden’s accession to NATO. Shoigu added that Russian military units in Russia’s northwestern and western regions had also been strengthened (Fontanka.ru, March 5, 2024).

Russia’s military buildup on its border with Finland continues. Images from commercial satellite imagery firm Planet Labs show that Russia is consolidating its military infrastructure along the frontier, including in Kamenka and Petrozavodsk on the Karelian Isthmus, northward up to Severomorsk-2 in Murmansk oblast, and in Olenia on the Kola Peninsula, south of Murmansk (SVT Nyheter, May 14). Other Russian military bases near the border with Finland are being upgraded, including Levashovo Air Base north of St. Petersburg; Gromovo Air Base, located 50 miles (80 kilometers) from the Finnish border in Sakkola village; and Pribylovo Air Base near Koivisto about 28 miles (45 kilometers) from the Finnish border and home to the 549th Independent Helicopter Regiment (Iltalehti, May 16).

As the Russian government considers the consequences of its stalemated war against Ukraine, one of its most significant consequences is that it has caused Sweden and Finland to join NATO, turning the Baltic into a NATO lake. NATO’s Scandinavian transport upgrades will take years to complete, however, and Russian border reinforcements demonstrate that it is not passively watching. The future of the situation at this border will heavily depend on whether Putin can end his war against Ukraine on terms favorable to Russia or if NATO’s support to Ukraine will be sufficient to thwart Russian victory. This conundrum, further complicated by NATO and Russia’s increasing confrontation near the Arctic Circle, guarantees a future murkier than a winter there.