Moscow Focusing on Åland Islands as Target in Event of War With NATO

Executive Summary:

• Moscow is focusing on the Åland Islands as a potential target in the event of war with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) now that the West has taken new steps to boost the defense of Gotland and the Svalbard islands.
• This Russian attention reflects the islands’ location astride key trade routes in the Baltic Sea and their complicated legal status. By international accord, they are neutral and demilitarized even though Finland, which has sovereignty there, is now in NATO.
• Many Finns have called on Helsinki to end this anomaly, but the Finnish government has resisted. New Russian commentaries about the Åland Islands and a Russian naval exercise near them could change that and make them a new hotspot in East-West relations.  

As relations between Moscow and the West have deteriorated in the course of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, the Russian government has been focusing on islands belonging to Western countries as possible targets for attack, especially those with complicated legal and demographic situations (see EDM, June 11). Earlier this year, Moscow devoted particular attention to the Svalbard islands, a Norwegian archipelago in the North Atlantic whose military use is regulated by international treaty, and to Gotland, a Swedish possession in the Baltic Sea, which Stockholm had earlier unilaterally demilitarized (see EDM, May 30, August 15). Now, however, Norway and Sweden have adopted a harder line in both places, with the former rejecting Moscow’s plans to increase Russia’s presence on its territory and the latter remilitarizing its strategically located island (Window on Eurasia, July 11, September 8; see EDM, August 15). As a result, Russian officials have shifted their attention to the Åland Islands. Russian commentators suggest that its even more complicated situation could allow Moscow to exploit what they see as potential Western divisions about defending this archipelago.

These islands have been an autonomous and demilitarized region in Finland since 1921. Located at the entrance to both the Gulf of Bothnia and the Gulf of Finland—and astride both trade routes and international cable and pipeline paths—the archipelago is composed of some 6,000 small islands. Only about one percent of these are populated, and the territory is internationally recognized as a part of Finland. However, the Åland Islands are inhabited by a Swedish-speaking population of approximately 30,000 which enjoys considerable autonomy. Swedish is the only official language there, an autonomous government makes most of the territory’s laws, and Åland islanders are not subject to Finnish military service. Additionally, various countries, including the Russian Federation, maintain consulates in the capital city of Mariehamn. These arrangements—a singular success of the discredited League of Nations, which put them in place at the dawn of its existence and was reportedly supported by most Åland residents—have survived ever since. The Åland Convention of 1921 has been suggested on occasion as a model to use for the resolution of other international disputes where a local population is a different ethnic group than that of the majority nationality of the country which enjoys sovereignty over the territory. Finland’s decision to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), however, has cast doubt on whether the existing arrangements are sustainable.

After Finland became a member of the Western alliance in April 2023, Finns launched a petition drive that garnered some 50,000 signatures demanding that Helsinki close the Russian consulate in the Åland Islands. They argued this not only because Moscow had closed Finnish consulates in Russia but also because the Russian consulate had been involved in a variety of actions, which the petition suggested were incompatible with its diplomatic status and threatened Finnish sovereignty (Window on Eurasia, June 14, 28, 2023). Russian outlets reacted with fury, implicating threatening reprisals if Helsinki took any steps in that direction (Window on Eurasia, June 14, 2023; Fond Strategicheskoi Kul’tury, June 26, 2023; Interfax, November 14, 2023). The Finnish parliament refused to take up the petition, and the new Finnish president, Alexander Stubb, has said that Helsinki would not act unilaterally on the status of the Åland Islands (RIA Novosti, December 11, 2023; Newsweek.com, January 28). Some Finnish security analysts and hardliners, however, have continued to argue that Helsinki must revisit its position on the Åland Islands much as Sweden has done with regard to Gotland (Newsweek.com, May 24; The Economist, September 19).

Three developments in the last few weeks have urged Helsinki to end the demilitarized status of the Åland Islands, likewise increasing the likelihood of a Russian response. First, Russian media have picked up on Western suggestions that the Åland Islands are now “islands of temptation” for Russia, expanding on the earlier Western description of this archipelago as “the Achilles’ heel of NATO” (Cf. Newsweek.com, May 24; The Economist, September 19. For the earlier reference, see RIA Novosti, May 24, 2023, picking up Bloomberg, May 23). Exploiting Western concerns in this way is a tactic Moscow has often employed in the past, both to signal its own intentions and to lay the groundwork for blaming the West later on for what Moscow either is doing now or plans to do.

Second, several Russian commentators are pointedly warning that any change in the Åland Islands’ status would threaten Russian national interests and compel Moscow to respond (Svobodnaya Pressa, September 22). These include Aleksandr Dmitriyevsky of the conservative Russian think tank “The Izborsky Club” and Vsevolod Shimov of the Russian Association of Baltic Research. Given that Russia now controls only seven percent of the Baltic Sea littoral (around St. Petersburg and in Kaliningrad), they argue, Moscow has no choice but to insist on the neutrality and demilitarization of the Åland Islands to defend its interests in the Baltic Sea region as well as to prevent NATO from attacking Russia itself. These commentators suggest that at the very least, Moscow must do everything it can to prevent a change in the archipelago’s status for as long as possible, lest a change risk triggering a war.

The third development in the last several weeks is particularly ominous. In early September, Russian President Vladimir Putin opened Ocean 2024, a Russian naval exercise in the Baltic Sea and North Atlantic, saying that it was the largest such exercise in more than 30 years (Kremlin.ru, September 10). The US Defense Department said that Ocean 2024 must not be underrated as a threat (The Washington Post). On September 22, at a session devoted to the results of this exercise, Nikolai Patrushev—chair of the Russian Naval Collegium, former secretary of the Russian Security Council, and one of the most outspoken hawks in Putin’s inner circle—said that the exercises had shown that the Russian Navy was quite capable of fulfilling “non-standard operational tasks,” undoubtedly a euphemism for carrying out attacks on other countries (RIA Novosti, September 23).

Given that both Norway and Sweden have adopted tougher measures to defend their territories in Svalbard and Gotland, respectively, any Russian move in either of those locations would undoubtedly lead to an Article 5 response from NATO. Patrushev, then, is likely thinking about the Åland Islands, the last chain of formally neutral and demilitarized islands in the region, hoping with his comment to intimidate both Finland and NATO and keep the involved parties from taking any steps to change the current situation. However, it is also quite likely that Patrushev’s message will prove counterproductive, and that Finland will seek to make a change precisely because of Russian threats. With the West considering the remilitarization and deneutralization of the Åland Islands, Moscow may seek to act before Helsinki and the West can put a new policy in place.