Europe wants US help in defense against Russian aggression

 Politico:

Northern European countries are rushing to shelter under Washington’s security umbrella.

A surge of new defense agreements between the U.S. and allies in Northern Europe allow for the fast-track deployment of American troops, marking the latest response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

New multi-year pacts with Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania signed this month signal a major shift that has occurred within NATO over the past two years as member countries race to restock arsenals after sending weapons to Ukraine and steel themselves for a new era of confrontation with Moscow.

At the heart of all six defense security cooperation deals are guidelines for allowing U.S. troops to operate in the country for training missions and easing red tape for personnel and their equipment to deploy quickly in case of emergency.

“This allows the U.S. to say: This entire region is one defense region. How can we work together, both in planning, exercises, deterrence operations? Now you can do it all in a rational way, rather than having to say — we can’t refuel in Sweden,” said Charly Salonius-Pasternak, a leading researcher at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs.

In the wake of the initial Russian seizure of Crimea in 2014, Sweden and Finland began to exercise and train more closely with NATO and individual nations, providing a de facto alliance presence in the High North that had not previously existed. The countries, along with their Baltic neighbors to the south, are located on the front line, anxiously watching their Baltic coasts for Russian activity, and will welcome the increased U.S. presence.

“The key driver for all of these agreements is Russia's invasion, concerns about European security and needing to have more U.S. forces eastward, particularly the Finland case,” said Max Bergmann, the director of the Europe, Russia and Eurasia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

The U.S. signed the most recent pact with Finland on Monday. Moscow was quick to respond and summoned the Finnish ambassador to Russia to complain. Finland’s entry into NATO in April was a particularly bitter pill for Moscow, which preferred the country’s non-aligned status. Now, Finland owns NATO’s longest border with Russia, stretching 800 miles from the Baltic Sea to the Arctic.


Helsinki says Moscow has weaponized migration along the Russian-Finnish border by encouraging migrants from other countries to attempt to cross into Finland, prompting a raft of crossing point closures on Finland’s side. This has added a sense of urgency for signing a security agreement with the United States.

During his visit to Washington to sign the defense agreement, Finnish Defense Minister Antti Häkkänen called the move a “hybrid operation” by Moscow to destabilize Finland. “Russia is using every tool they can.”

Just days ago, Vladimir Putin announced Russia will resurrect the Leningrad Military District, a long defunct Russian military group that borders Finland, and will stand up new military units there. The moves provided fresh impetus for stationing American troops on Finnish soil.

Helsinki’s traditional balancing act between Moscow and the West came to a full stop when Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine in February 2022, leading Finland to jump into the NATO alliance along with Sweden, which is still waiting for Turkey’s and Hungary's vote on its membership.

Washington already signed agreements with Iceland and Norway in previous years — meaning the U.S. now has legal frameworks to station troops in all countries of Europe’s northern region. Nordic countries also have deep defense ties among each other — they're all part of the Nordic Defence Cooperation agreement, alongside Iceland and Norway, a pact that removes barriers to defense cooperation between the countries.
...

The lack of trust in Russia under Putin has become palpable in Europe.  I suspect Putin's paranoia about the West is behind his moves that have made others in the region distrust Russia.  Russia's war in Ukraine has been a disaster that has made other neighbors wary of the Putin regime.  That war has also exposed Russia's military weakness.  That weakness has had the opposite effect of what Putin intended.

See also:

Ukrainian SOF precision-guided HIMARS strike obliterates Russian Grad system, ammo stash