84% of Finns say Russia poses a significant military threat
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Pro-Russian forces drive an armoured vehicle in Mariupol on April 11, 2022.
PHOTO: REUTERS
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HELSINKI (BLOOMBERG) - Finns are making a sombre assessment of their eastern neighbour with 84 per cent thinking that Russia poses a significant military threat after it attacked Ukraine on Feb 24 and began waging a full-scale war.
That's up 25 percentage points from a year earlier, according to a survey measuring attitudes in the second and third weeks of Russia's invasion, published on Tuesday (April 12) by Finnish Business and Policy Forum EVA.
In 2005, fewer than one in three considered Russia a significant military threat. The changed attitudes help explain why Finns almost overnight began backing entry to the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato), with the government seen leaning towards a membership application to the defence alliance within weeks.
The people in the Nordic country, which has a 1,300-km (800-mile) border with Russia and a history of wars going back hundreds of years, think Russia is an expansionary dictatorship, according to the poll.
They're nearly unanimous in saying their neighbour is "unstable and unpredictable", with just 2 per cent saying they did not agree with that characterisation of Russia in the poll.
Yet almost 60 per cent of Finns said Russians are "pleasant people" and more than 70 per cent said Russia has a rich culture. The poll conducted by Taloustutkimus Oy had 2,074 responses in the period March 4-15.
