Lawfare Daily: Minna Ålander on Finland, NATO, and the Russian Threat

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4.7 • 6.2K Ratings

🗓️ 29 May 2025

⏱️ 38 minutes

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Summary

Lawfare’s Ukraine Fellow Anastasiia Lapatina sits down with Minna Ålander, an Associate Fellow at the Chatham House Europe Programme, to discuss Russia's buildup of military infrastructure along its borders with NATO member countries, particularly along the Finnish border, and what European countries are doing to prepare for a potential clash with Russia. They also talk through Finland’s history with Russia and its security capabilities, especially in light of Russia’s actions in Ukraine, the integration of Finland and Sweden into NATO, potential scenarios of Russian aggression, and the critical role of the U.S. in NATO's security framework.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	The following podcast contains advertising.
0:04.4	To access an ad-free version of the Lawfare podcast, become a material supporter of Lawfare at
0:11.5	patreon.com slash lawfare. That's patreon.com slash lawfare.
0:18.2	Also, check out Lawfare's other podcast offerings, Rational Security, Chatter, Lawfare No Bull,
0:26.9	and The Aftermath.
0:32.3	Lou Roll is not something you'd normally feel good about, but ours is not your normal loo roll. It donates 50%
0:40.2	of profits to help provide access to clean water and toilets, which means every we is more of a
0:46.8	and every number two is more of a number two. Switch to toilet paper that makes you feel good. Okay, you get the idea.
0:59.4	Who gives a crap? Feel good toilet paper. So there's a lot of those things that Finland kept in place
1:09.9	because that was sort of like
1:10.9	the expectation. Obviously, everything that is happening in Ukraine in terms of the unmanned
1:15.4	systems is like a novelty and that there's like a lot of lessons for Finland to learn as
1:21.0	well. But like on the more sort of like traditional side of things, like Finland is pretty well
1:25.9	prepared for this type of warfare.
1:29.0	It's the Lawfare podcast.
1:30.7	I am Anastasia Lapitina, Ukraine fellow at Lawfare, with Minna Olander, an associate
1:37.1	fellow at Chatham House Europe program.
1:40.8	One could hope that there is some level of uncertainty about like a possible U.S. response left,
1:47.3	although it looks increasingly unlikely that they would really do anything to help their European allies in a case of war.
1:55.8	I spoke to Mina about Russia's build-up of military infrastructure along Europe's borders and what the European
2:02.9	countries are doing to prepare for a potential clash with Russia.
2:08.1	So there's been some really interesting reporting in the past few weeks about the potential
	...

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