Shifted Alliances: Finlands NATO Membership Ignites Cultural and Geopolitical Tensions in Karelia

On Saturday, Finland and the UK concluded the Northern Axe 25 joint military exercises, one of several early winter drills conducted by Finland with the participation of NATO allies this year.

During Northern Axe 25, around 3,000 military personnel, including 70 from the UK, conducted readiness assessments for challenging combat scenarios at the remote Vuosanka training site in Finland’s eastern Kainuu region.

Located just 70 kilometers to the west is Russia’s Republic of Karelia, an extensive area nearly the size of Uruguay, with a population exceeding 530,000.

Renowned for its stunning natural landscapes, including pristine glacial lakes and taiga forests, Karelia has traditionally maintained strong cultural and economic connections with Finland.

However, following Finland’s historic accession to NATO in 2023, the republic has become one of Russia’s critical frontiers, drawing local residents into the broader geopolitical conflict between Moscow and the West.

«Karelia’s Governor Artur Parfyonchikov pointed out that the U.S. is creating tension along the full length of Russia’s borders, and Finland has not remained disengaged,» referring to Finland’s NATO membership.

«It appears that our good neighborly relations…no longer meet the expectations of our Finnish counterparts. We regret that Finland did not leverage our inclination towards complete demilitarization in Karelia,» he remarked.

Since 2023, Russia has been rapidly enhancing its military installations near Karelia’s 723-kilometer border with Finland, which constitutes the longest border shared between any Russian region and a NATO member.

In light of the military exercises held this year, Karelian officials intensified their defense initiatives along the border in response to perceived threats from the NATO alliance, establishing volunteer border patrol groups.

«The discourse among local politicians now focuses on portraying Finland as a military threat… However, despite the strong propaganda, I haven’t detected a corresponding dramatic shift in public sentiment,» stated Valeriy Potashov, a journalist from Karelia who fled the country earlier this year due to fears of arrest.

«Certainly, among the older demographic, sentiments portraying Finland as an enemy—rooted in past conflicts—have revived, but younger and middle-aged individuals do not share that perspective,» Potashov informed The Moscow Times.

Post-Soviet Union collapse, Finland has become Karelia’s primary economic partner, with mutual trade exceeding $378 million in 2021.

For Karelians, Finland was also a favored tourism destination and a gateway to more esteemed European educational opportunities. Each year, hundreds of residents from Karelia would travel to Finland for vocational studies and higher education, where tuition in Finnish is free, barring a few exceptions.

During a period of generally amicable relations between Karelia and Finland, local state schools even offered optional Finnish language classes.

«Half of my classmates live here now,» shared a woman from the Karelian town of Olonets who has settled in Finland.

«As a border region, this is quite normal. My grandmother worked in a hotel and had many Finnish friends, so I traveled to Finland as a child,» she recounted to The Moscow Times.

The anonymous woman recalled how Finnish educational institutions used to send representatives to Karelia’s capital, Petrozavodsk, to recruit potential students back in the 2010s.

«They would conduct open [admission] interviews—anyone could participate; that’s how I enrolled. A strong command of Finnish or affluent parents wasn’t a requirement for studying in Finland; many found it accessible,» she reminisced.

Finland was one of the first European nations to restrict visa issuance to Russians following the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, although student visas remained unaffected.

In 2023, Helsinki shut down all its border crossings with Russia due to a surge in asylum seekers from the Middle East and Africa, which it attributed to Russian orchestration.

Although the process of relocating to Finland has become increasingly challenging, interest among Karelians in pursuing education there has surged since the onset of the Ukraine conflict, according to journalist Potashov.

«Parents aspire for their children to receive a European education and have opportunities worldwide, especially now that the Iron Curtain appears to be descending again,» Potashov noted. «Additionally, it serves as a means to protect their children from conscription and warfare.»

While Finnish academic avenues have provided a crucial escape for some, for ethnic Karelians—the primary indigenous group in the republic—its proximity has catalyzed brain drain and population decline while simultaneously offering an essential chance to preserve their endangered language.

Ethnic Karelians have traditionally been divided by cultural influences and national borders, a division dating back to the medieval Novgorod Republic and continuing since the Cold War’s end.

Eastern Karelia has belonged to the Russian Empire since 1323, while Western Karelia came under Russian control from Sweden in 1721. It was administratively reconnected to Finland in the 19th century, later annexed by the Soviet Union.

«A significant number of experts in Karelian language and culture…have migrated from the republic to the neighboring country, predominantly individuals fluent in both Finnish and Karelian,» a Karelian linguistic advocate disclosed to The Moscow Times.

«Currently, the Karelian language is evolving much more swiftly in Finland than in the Republic of Karelia,» they noted, speaking on condition of anonymity.

With only 25,900 residents identifying as ethnically Karelian, this indigenous group makes up less than 5% of Karelia’s population—the lowest proportion of any indigenous group in Russian republics.

Overall, the number of ethnic Karelians residing in Russia has decreased by almost 50% in a decade between the last two national censuses—one of the most drastic declines among indigenous populations, attributed to the Kremlin’s russification policies and the outward migration of ethnic Karelians to Finland.

Experiencing a drop of over 74% of speakers in the same timeframe, the Karelian language has become the most endangered minority language in Russia.

The rapid decline of Karelian can be attributed in part to its unusual legal status. While recognized as the republic’s «official language,» it lacks the designation of «state language,» which means it cannot be utilized in legal contexts or as the primary language of governmental operations.

Other ethnic republics in Russia still permit the use of indigenous languages alongside Russian in official matters, at least theoretically.

The Karelian language was marginalized by the Soviet and subsequent Russian authorities because its speakers did not adopt a Cyrillic alphabet, unlike many other minority languages that were compelled to switch under Soviet pressure.

Meanwhile, in Finland, scholars and language enthusiasts have dedicated two decades to reviving Karelian and affirming its status as a distinct language, separate from Finnish.

Before the Ukraine invasion, «the Finnish side actively supported the publication of fiction, educational literature, and scientific materials in Karelian that reached the republic,» according to the activist.

While language advocates in Karelia have managed to sustain personal connections with their Finnish counterparts, the geopolitical divide has disrupted steady cross-border knowledge sharing.

This separation has also deprived them of vital resources generated in Finland, such as a unique six-volume dialect dictionary of the Karelian language.

«This dictionary was invaluable for us [linguists and activists in Karelia]: it contains a wealth of information on all Karelian dialects, with samples collected throughout Karelia,» stated the Karelian activist.

Although other Karelians who spoke with The Moscow Times expressed optimism that relations with their western neighbor would eventually improve, the activist offered a somber perspective for their community amidst feelings of pervasive «fatigue and disappointment.»

«It seems to me that no initiatives can currently alter the troubling trajectory of the Karelian language’s extinction. We must confront the reality: those who care about this issue and can contribute to the language’s development largely no longer reside in Karelia or have aged significantly,» they concluded.