KP13 (May 9th to May 20th )

Ukraine war puts new focus on Finland’s network of bunkers

At an underground sports centre in central Helsinki, a group of teenagers were playing floorball, a type of hockey
popular in the Nordic country during the long winter months.
Not far behind one of the goals, a small door led to the “control room”, a dimly lit space with large oxygen systems
and electricity generators.
If the worst fears of Europe materialise and Moscow’s war in Ukraine spills across the continent to other neighbours
of Russia, sports centres like these can quickly be turned into emergency bomb shelters ready to accommodate
thousands of Finns.
“I sleep much better at night knowing we have these bomb shelters. Especially now with what is happening in Ukraine,”
said Tomi Rask, a safety instructor of Helsinki’s Civil defence centre who was leading the tour of the bomb shelter,
which can host up to 6,000 people.
Rask said Finland first started to build an extensive network of bomb shelters in the 1960s, partly stemming from its
experience of fighting the Soviet Union in the winter war of 1939.
As the country has not seen any military action since 1945, the bomb shelters have been used as sports facilities,
swimming pools, car parks and storage.
But the defence strategy of Finland, which has a 1,340km (830-mile) border with Russia, has come under renewed
focus since Moscow invaded Ukraine on 24 February, triggering the biggest geopolitical crisis in Europe since the
second world war.
Finland this week started discussions about joining the US-led Nato military alliance while its foreign minister told the
Guardian his country had real concerns about the prospect of Russia using tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine.
“I don’t want to brag, but the Finnish bomb shelter technology is one of the best. We have been doing this for a while,”
Rask said, pointing to the two massive steel doors at the entry of the shelter, that he said would withstand heavy
bombardment – including nuclear – as well as chemical attacks.

Rask said all buildings in the country above a certain size had to have their own bomb shelters, estimating there were
approximately 5,500 civil defence shelters with roughly 900,000 places in Helsinki alone, more than the capital’s
population.
The shelter was maze-like, with different rooms popping into view as we walked through, including a cafeteria and a
children’s playroom.
“It was built like this on purpose,” Rask said, “Studies have shown that people react better to rooms that have walls,
where there are boundaries that create a sense of privacy.”
Rask’s face dropped when asked whether the events in Ukraine have impacted the work of the city’s civil defence, the
unit responsible for looking after the shelters.
“It’s sad to see what is happening in Ukraine. I see the poor people hiding in the metro or in theatres. It shows again
how important it is what we do.”
But the vast shelter network is just one of the components of what Finland calls its strategy of “comprehensive
security” that has started to attract attention following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
For decades, the country has engaged with every level of society to prepare for the possibility of conflict with its
neighbour, said Charly Salonius-Pasternak, a security expert at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs.
“Russia is never specifically mentioned, but it has always been understood that the country should be prepared to
make the threshold for a Russian attack as high as possible.”
Finland, a country of 5.5 million people, can muster a wartime army of 280,000 personnel, while in total it has 900,000
trained reservists.
Helsinki has maintained its high level of defence spending even as others cut in the 1990s and 2000s after the fall of
the Soviet Union.
But despite the countrywide efforts to bolster its security, Salonius-Pasternak stressed that Finland, which frequently
ranks as one of the happiest countries in the world, was the opposite of a “militarised society”.
“It is only natural you bring a rain jacket when there could be clouds.”