The MP for the Aland Islands, a Swedish-speaking archipelago in the Baltic Sea, makes a better case than most when, overlooking a harbour of sailing boats, he claims to represent the most beautiful constituency in the world.
“You can finish work and ten minutes later you’re down here at the docks, taking out a small boat to have a picnic on an empty island,” says Mats Lofstrom, describing the bliss of the Scandinavian summer.
Nearly 7,000 islands compose this autonomous region of Finland. The vast majority of them are uninhabited skerries, small outcrops of red granite visited only by seals and birds.
The islanders’ unhurried existence has been complicated, however, by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Since 1856, the Aland Islands have been demilitarised, a status that exempts locals from national service and prevents Finland from maintaining a garrison on one of the most strategic parts of its coastline.
Undefended, the islands, which control access to the Gulf of Finland and the Gulf of Bothnia, represent a peculiar vulnerability in the Baltic, which has otherwise been nicknamed the “Nato lake” after Finland and Sweden’s accession to the defensive alliance last year.
“Finland is the lock in the defence of northern Europe and the islands are the back door to Finland’s defences,” says Pekka Toveri, a Finnish MEP for the governing National Coalition Party and a former major general in the Finnish Defence Forces.
“The demilitarised status only benefits Russia. Why would we do anything that benefits Russia in the current day and time?”
Finland maintained conscription after the end of the Cold War and has the largest wartime army in Europe, promising a prickly reception for any Russian soldier that decides to march on Helsinki from nearby St Petersburg — something the Red Army learnt to its cost during the Winter War of 1939-1940.
But senior military figures have pointed out that despite the impressive fortifications along its 830-mile land border, Finland imports 95 per cent of its goods by sea and is almost totally reliant on the straits surrounding the Aland Islands to remain connected to the world.
The capital of the Aland Islands, Mariehamn, a town of red, clapboard houses, is named after a 19th-century Tsarina. In the islands’ parliament, a painting reminds visitors that the archipelago was ravaged by Peter the Great during a succession of wars fought with Sweden that ultimately resulted in Russian annexation in 1809.
“Drunk and scary,” says Jorgen Pettersson, speaker of the parliament, of the pillaging figures. “The Russians wanted to conquer everything. Aland was literally a battlefield at the time.”
The archipelago’s neutral and demilitarised status was first agreed in an international treaty signed after the Crimean War, when an Anglo-French expeditionary force scuppered Russian attempts to build a huge fortress on the Aland Islands — resulting in the award of the first Victoria Cross to Charles Davis Lucas, a sailor who threw a live shell overboard.
Subsequently reaffirmed by the League of Nations in 1921 and then by a Finnish-Soviet treaty marking the end of the Winter War, Russia still maintains a consulate in Mariehamn to monitor the islands’ neutrality.
The consulate sits on a square recently renamed Ukrainiaplatsen where locals gather every day at 5pm to demonstrate against the war. According to popular myth, the Russian consul, a mysterious and reclusive presence in the community, monitors the protests through CCTV. “If the war in Ukraine goes wrong, maybe Russia will go further,” says Harriet Tuominen, 79, carrying a sunflower placard. “You can’t trust them.”
Yet despite the hostility to Russia and support for Finland’s membership of Nato, the majority of the 30,000 islands’ population remains committed to neutrality and demilitarisation, polling suggests. “We are safer with the demilitarisation. Attacking Aland would be like attacking a hospital,” says Mosse Wallen, 73, the organiser of the anti-war protests.
On the Finnish-speaking mainland, public opinion appears to differ — 60 per cent support remilitarisation there, according to a poll in 2022. Those in favour compare the situation to Gotland, a similarly strategic island that Sweden decided to remilitarise following Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, deploying air defences and re-establishing a mechanised battalion armed with CV90 armoured vehicles and Leopard 2 tanks.
For now, it is the Finnish coastal guard and not the navy which is responsible for patrolling the brackish waters around Aland. On deck, a barbecue has been set up for the summer and the coast guards spend their days checking boat licences and controlling harbour speeds when not watching the archipelago’s extraordinary wildlife. “It’s quite calm as you can see,” says Ilja Iljin, 42, deputy commander of the West Finland district. He points out a sea eagle, widening its gyre above.
The overt threat from Russia appears limited. But the Finnish coastal guard is more concerned by the threat of hybrid war.
Out at sea, a shadow fleet of ageing Russian tankers is exporting oil through the Baltic, threatening the pristine waters around Aland with potential spills.
Following recent attacks on the Nordstream and Baltic connector pipelines, the submarine cables that supply Finland with electricity and internet via Aland also appear vulnerable. Within the archipelago, the shallow waters are just 15m in depth at times. “You basically need civilian scuba kit to reach them,” says Yuri Jalava, 53, the border guard’s deputy station chief.
But Finland, which overturned almost 80 years of non-alignment by joining Nato, does not appear in a rush to remilitarise the Aland Islands. Last year, the Finnish foreign ministry commissioned a report on the status of the islands, which made no recommendation for any change.
“It is obviously not just a Finnish question because the neutrality and demilitarisation are enshrined in international treaties and international laws,” says Elina Valtonen, 42, the Finnish foreign minister, who, like many others, happened to chose the Aland Islands as her summer holiday destination.
“Sure there are vulnerabilities. But the Finnish Defence Forces have been taking those into account for decades. Now those are being taken into account in the defence planning of Nato. I don’t foresee any change to the status. If there was a change, it would need to obviously be agreed with our friends and partners as well.”
The same treaties that require demilitarisation also oblige Finland to defend the Aland Islands should they come under attack and while the Finnish Defence Forces cannot train on the archipelago itself, military experts note the frequent wargaming in Finnish coastal areas that bear a remarkable resemblance to the islands’ geography.
Given Finnish expertise in some of the trickiest waters to navigate in Europe, a Russian attack on the Aland Islands would be unlikely to end well, according to Jyri Lavikainen, a research fellow at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs and army reservist. “We’d be happy to help them commit suicide,” he says.
