Russia’s Disastrous Winter War on Finland Could Give Clues on Ukraine Endgame
Joseph Stalin's 1939 invasion of Finland has been compared to Vladimir Putin's aggression in Ukraine amid questions over whether a deal that followed the Winter War could be a blueprint for a conflict eight and a half decades later.
But Helsinki has warned Kyiv must not follow the lead of the agreement that followed the war started by the Soviet dictator which established the framework for what is known as "Finlandization."
The 1948 Finno-Soviet treaty allowed Finland to keep its independence but at the cost of becoming demilitarized, remaining neutral and aligning foreign policy decisions with Moscow. One Finnish expert told Newsweek that such a model for Ukraine "belongs to the bin" and would only serve Putin's interests.
However, Russia's war on Ukraine enters its fourth year on February 24—one month after Donald Trump's White House return with a pledge to end hostilities quickly. Speculation about negotiations may add to the echoes of the deal that followed the World War II battles Finland fought against Moscow.
Similar Wars Eight Decades Apart
Moscow's invasions of Finland on November 30, 1939 and of Ukraine in 2022 were both preceded by failed talks, and Moscow possessing an overwhelming equipment advantage and expectations it would easily win.
"Stalin, just like Putin, thought that the war would be over in just a few days," Pekka Kallioniemi, postdoctoral researcher at Tampere University in Finland and creator of Vatnik Soup which analyses Russian disinformation, told Newsweek.
"The plan was that the war would be finished in about three weeks, so that Finland could be given to Stalin as a 'birthday present' on the 21st of December," he said of the conflict that started on November 30.
Moscow had demanded its neighbor, which had been part of tsarist Russia until 1917, cede border territories citing security reasons. Fast forward to 2022, Putin claimed "denazifying" Ukraine and keeping it neutral justified his full-scale invasion.
"Stalin blamed the Finnish leadership as being fascist, and the idea with the invasion was to create a buffer zone between Germany and the USSR," said Kallioniemi.
"The Soviets also orchestrated several false flag operations before and during the Winter War, and the war actually started after the Soviets shelled their own troops in Mainila," he said, referring to an incident in Karelia carried out by the Soviet NKVD security agency.
"The Soviet army had so-called political commissars, who made sure that unmotivated soldiers didn't flee," he added. "Similar strategies have allegedly been used by PMC Wagner while sending waves of untrained soldiers to the frontlines."
Finland repelled Soviet attacks and inflicted substantial losses on the invaders in temperatures as low as −45°F. "Stalin sent a lot of Ukrainian soldiers to fight against Finns with very basic equipment, and a lot of them froze to death," he said. "Photos from one of the most brutal battles, the Battle of Raate Road, resemble photos from the first months of the war in Ukraine."
'Finlandization'
Finland fought valiantly for its sovereignty but Stalin still achieved territorial objectives. This experience has informed Helsinki's warnings against Kyiv agreeing to any demands that it shelve its NATO aspirations.
Finland's foreign minister Elina Valtonen said forcing neutrality onto Ukraine will not bring about a peaceful solution and Russia could not be trusted to adhere to any agreement it signs. "Let's face it, Ukraine was neutral before they were attacked by Russia," Valtonen told Reuters in November.
"Finlandization is a model that belongs to the bin," said Sari Arho Havrén, visiting scholar at the University of Helsinki and associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI).
"To suggest such a model for Ukraine serves foremost Russia and Putin," she told Newsweek. "We live in a very different time, and the circumstances are entirely different. For Finland, it was a game of survival. It was seen as a temporary evil while balancing between the West and the Soviet Union."
"Suggesting Finland's history as a viable model to Ukraine not only tries to whitewash Finlandization into a desirable and durable form of governance," she added.
After decades of neutrality and spurred by Moscow's invasion of Ukraine, Finland finally joined NATO in April 2023. But Arho Havrén said any so-called Finlandization deal "veils the idea that Ukraine could not be granted NATO membership," even though Ukraine has pursued Euro-Atlantic integration over the last two decades.
"The problem with the Finlandization of Ukraine is not Ukraine—it's Russia," said Konstantin Sonin, a Russian-born professor at the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy and a vehement Putin critic.
"The Finlandization of Ukraine is exactly what was tried between 1991 and 2014 in some sense," he told Newsweek. "Until 2022, Russia had enormous influence over Ukraine—perhaps more than the Soviet Union had over Finland."
"If Ukrainians would be asked, 'could we go back to 2020 and somehow have a guarantee that Russia would not do what it did in 2022?' hypothetically they might have agreed to this," he added.
Ukraine's Hope for Trump
Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov's said no talks with Ukraine would happen unless Kyiv renounced reclaiming its 1991 borders.
Lavrov said that Moscow was "not satisfied" with Trump's view about freezing hostilities and "transferring further responsibility for confronting Russia to the Europeans."
However, Estonia's foreign minister Margus Tsahkna expressed hope that the president-elect can make a difference, telling British newspaper The Telegraph that Trump can "become the Churchill of our times," by delivering a "long-lasting" ceasefire.
Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky also expressed optimism saying on New Year's Eve that peace "will not be given to us as a gift" and that Trump "wants and will be able to bring peace and end to Putin's aggression."
As Ukraine faced a difficult end to 2024 in which Russian forces increasing the pace of their advances on the eastern front albeit at a high cost in personnel, Zelensky had said any settlement required Western security guarantees and a NATO membership invite, which Russia rejects out of hand.
"I think at this point people are ready to surrender land, but we would not surrender the land if there is no serious security agreement in place," Yuriy Boyechko, CEO and founder of the charity Hope for Ukraine, told Newsweek. "In any case, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky would have to present any proposed agreement to the country.
"Whatever Zelensky says, any type of peace treaty will have to go in front of the people in a referendum and the people will have to decide because too much blood, sweat and tears have been shed."
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This story was originally published January 5, 2025 at 4:00 AM