UK to station military officials in Finland as Russian troops mass on the border

Moscow has been sending hundreds more soldiers, as well as building warehouses and airfields, close to its border with the Nato member

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Britain is to send military officials to Finland to support the country as it faces a build-up of Russian troops on its eastern border.

A team of UK military liaison officers will join the development of the Nato alliance’s Forward Land Forces (FLF) in Finland.

The FLF is part of Nato’s deterrence against Russia on its eastern flank and comes as Vladimir Putin plans to send thousands more soldiers to the 800-mile Finnish border, fuelling fears of a direct confrontation by Moscow with the West.

John Healey, the UK’s Defence Secretary, will announce the decision to deploy a liaison team to Finland at a Nato meeting in Brussels today.

This follows the Government’s Strategic Defence Review, published earlier this week, which committed the UK to taking the lead in Nato to increase European security.

The deployment to Finland is a sign of increasing concern about the potential for a provocation by Russia to test Nato’s resolve. Finland’s military intelligence service expects there to be as many as 50,000 new Russian soldiers to be stationed at the border, boosting the current total of 30,000, according to the Swiss newspaper Neue Zürcher Zeitung.

At the Petrozavodsk military base, 175km east of the Finnish border, the Russian army has built three storage halls, each of which can accommodate up to 50 armoured vehicles (Photo: Planet Labs)

The Ministry of Defence (MoD) said the team of liaison officers would work with both Finland and Sweden as they develop FLF Finland, which it said is a “vital component to strengthening the alliance’s deterrence posture on the eastern flank”.

The team of three experts will be learning from and providing assistance to Finland, which has faced increasing militarisation over the border in Russia since it joined Nato in 2023.

Last month, hundreds of UK military personnel took part in a major Nato exercise, codenamed Northern Strike, in northern Finland as a show of force and firepower.

It included new British Army AH64E Apache attack helicopters firing Hellfire missiles and 30mm guns simulating close support to allied combat forces on the ground, including British Army infantry units.

In May, The i Paper reported that hundreds of Russian troops, including units from Ukraine as well as suspected intelligence specialists, have been deployed to the Finnish border, in addition to the thousands of regular soldiers already stationed there.

The new personnel were thought to include signals intelligence specialists or electronic warfare experts alongside operational military units.

It followed the publication of satellite images showing new airbases, army camps and storage facilities that have been built up by the Russian military since 2023.

The images, first published by The New York Times, appeared to show new rows of tents, military vehicles, warehouses, new airfields and the renovation of an old helicopter base.

Last month the head of strategy for Finland’s armed forces said his military was following the build-up “very closely” and had to “prepare for the worst”.

British troops directing an Apache helicopter as they deployed for a war drill in Finland last month (Photo: Ministry of Defence)

Maj-Gen Sami Nurmi said while he did not anticipate an “immediate military threat towards Finland or Nato from this direction”, it was probable that Russia was starting to shift its forces close to the border in expectation of a possible ceasefire in the war in Ukraine.

Finland has been building a new fence on its eastern border, with 22 miles of a 125-mile structure already complete.

In 2024, Russia reactivated the Leningrad Military District, near southern Finland and Estonia.

The UK Defence Secretary has also confirmed the Government will push ahead with the recommendation in the Strategic Defence Review that the British Army will “increase lethality” over the next decade.

While the review called for a “small” increase in actual Armed Forces personnel, it also pledged a tenfold increase in lethality – through investment in new technologies and firepower.

This includes surveillance technology and artificial intelligence. The Royal Navy will also ramp up new drone systems as part of an evolution in how it fights, moving towards a mix of crewed, uncrewed, and increasingly autonomous capabilities to secure the North Atlantic for the UK and Nato.

The MoD will spend at least 10 per cent of its budget on drones and novel technologies.

Healey said: “We will invest in technology to give our troops the edge in the battlefields of the future; transforming our Armed Forces and boosting our warfighting readiness.

“This will increase our lethality, provide a powerful deterrent to our adversaries, and put the UK at the leading edge of innovation in Nato.

“We will back UK business to innovate at a war-time pace; creating highly skilled jobs and fast-tracking the weapons of tomorrow into the hands of our warfighters, as part of our Government’s Plan for Change.”

However Britain and other European Nato allies are under pressure from the Trump administration to go further on defence spending.

US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth has insisted that a demand for Nato countries to spend 5 per cent of GDP on defence “will happen”.