Nato member Finland warns of hostile activities by Russia

HELSINKI – Finland is experiencing suspicious acts of sabotage and disruption and believes Russia is engaged in broad-ranging influence operations against it and other European countries, Finland’s Interior Minister, Ms Lulu Ranne, said.

Nato and Western intelligence services, including Finland’s, have warned that Russia is behind a growing number of hostile activities across the Euro-Atlantic area, ranging from repeated cyber attacks to Moscow-linked arson – all of which Russia denies.

“We are experiencing disruptions, acts of sabotage, various types of damage, and instrumentalised migration, among other things. This creates a general sense of uncertainty and vagueness about what is true and what is not,” Ms Ranne told reporters.

She said investigations into many of the cases were ongoing.

“However, based on the information from both civilian and military intelligence, we have clear indications pointing to Russia,” she said, adding the link was most evident in GPS interference Finland has witnessed in its maritime and air traffic.        

“Currently, Russia is the main entity engaging in broad-ranging influence operations against us,” she said. 

Some of the suspicious cases may stem from vandalism and prove not to have any links to state actors, but rather people’s increased alertness to such incidents, Finland’s Security and Intelligence Service Supo said.

Earlier in October, Nordic utility Fortum told Reuters it faces cyberattacks on a daily basis in Finland and Sweden, and has sometimes spotted drones and suspicious individuals near its sites.

Its power plants’ satellite connections have also been disturbed.

The Nordic region’s largest lender Nordea has been targeted with an unprecedented denial of service campaign for weeks, which National Cyber Security Director Rauli Paananen of the ministry of transport and communications described as “highly unusual”.

The attacks prompted Finland’s National Bureau of Investigation to launch an investigation into cyber attacks targeting the financial sector on Oct 18.

Nordea said in an emailed statement to Reuters: “The recent wave of DDoS attacks, which started in mid-September across Nordic countries, was the most aggressive we’ve ever seen. The attacks led to temporary slowness or unavailability of online services.”

It said it had blocked around 90 per cent of recent attacks against it.