Less than three years after joining NATO, Finland has initiated extensive military exercises involving approximately 15,000 personnel across its southern and eastern regions, including areas adjacent to the Russian border. These drills signify a crucial shift toward full wartime readiness and deeper integration with Allied forces.
As reported by the Finnish Defence Forces on October 30, 2025, Finland will deploy around 15,000 soldiers, conscripts, reservists, and active personnel for a broad series of early-winter exercises stretching close to the Russian frontier. The decision signals that Helsinki is now training for the rapid generation of wartime forces on its own territory, integrating Allied detachments. The establishment of a new regional command headquarters in Mikkeli, barely 140 km from Russia, provides a clear operational focus that will be closely monitored by Moscow.
Testing the Total Defense Model and NATO Integration
Helsinki is moving from simply demonstrating readiness to rehearsing an actual defense of the country in winter conditions, using forces that mirror its structure in a crisis. By combining conscripts, refresher-training reservists, standing Army units, Border Guard elements, and Allied troops, the Finnish Defence Forces are validating the core of Finland’s total-defense model: rapid mobilization, immediate integration of foreign reinforcements, and effective command and control in a contested environment.
The Mikkeli regional command strengthens the eastern architecture and shortens decision-making chains for operations conducted just west of the Russian border. This clearly communicates Finland’s intention to manage escalation from its own soil. For NATO, the message is equally important: the Alliance can now plan to use Finnish territory as a fully prepared forward operating area in the Nordic-Baltic theater.
Exercise Scenarios and International Participation
The series is built around demanding events that recreate a national-level defensive campaign:
- South: “Lively Sentry 25” will mobilize over 6,500 soldiers. The scenario includes a mechanized battlegroup conducting an assault in an urban area, a clear evolution inspired by observations from Ukrainian cities, aimed at proving Finnish units can defeat an armored attack on their own territory.
- Vuosanka: The multinational live exercise “Northern Axe 25” will include British soldiers and, notably, assign a Finnish regional company of reservists a combat mission within a brigade-level LIVEX. This is a significant step, meaning reservists are being trained for offensive, delaying, and night operations alongside Allies.
- North (Rovajärvi): The largest training area in Europe will host several combined arms drills:
- Northern Strike 225: Joined by a Polish contingent, this exercise will build a fires-heavy regional element capable of conducting live artillery missions.
- Lapland Steel 25: Will bring together Finnish, Swedish, and British troops to validate joint operating in the Arctic environment. The presence of Swedish troops is politically and militarily meaningful, showing that Nordic interoperability is now practiced on Finnish soil.
Air Defense and Interoperability
A key component is air and air-defense integration. The multinational ground-based air defense exercise, “ADEX Mallet Strike 2/25,” will gather up to 1,000 soldiers, joined by British and Swedish units, to practice in a dense, electronic-warfare-heavy environment. This directly reflects lessons from the Ukrainian front, where complex air threats and jamming are prevalent. By rehearsing multinational GBAD on its ranges, Finland is effectively signaling its readiness to host and protect Allied air-defense assets and contribute to a layered Nordic-Baltic air shield.
This early-winter exercise entity marks a qualitative step in Finland’s post-NATO military posture. It validates the wartime competence of 15,000 people on the terrain and in the season where a real contingency with Russia would most likely occur. For Russia, this means any attempt to test NATO’s northern flank would immediately encounter a pre-trained combined Finnish-Allied force; for the Alliance, it confirms that Finland is not a buffer but a forward operating base.
