Survival skills to cyber security – how Nordic nations prepare for war with Russia ...Middle East

For many years, major road accidents and extreme weather were the mainstays of daily work for Norway’s civil defence forces.

Then in 2022, Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and those same civil protection units embarked on a seismic shift, training and preparing for a possible invasion.

Norway was not alone. Its four fellow Nordic nations – Sweden, Denmark, Iceland and Finland – now understood that their security situation had changed entirely.

Finland and Sweden abandoned longstanding policies of neutrality to join Nato in response to Russia’s invasion – Finland in 2023 and Sweden a year later. Norway, Denmark and Iceland have been part of the alliance since its inception in 1949.

The Nordics are frontrunners when it comes to the ability to defend against Russia, thanks to the concept of total defence. Developed during the Cold War, this whole-of-society approach combines the armed forces and civil society, ensuring that national security is everyone’s responsibility, not just the military’s.

Norway, Finland, Sweden and Denmark all employ forms of military conscription. Although Sweden wound down its preparedness after the Cold War, Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 prompted it to reintroduce conscription, and Denmark recently extended the draft to include women.

All four nations have also updated guidance for citizens for emergency planning, advising them to stock up on long-life food, water, medicine, and secure a back-up power supply.

Last year, Sweden issued a new version of its “If Crisis or War Comes” pamphlet to include advice and information on how to survive air raids, cyberattacks, psychological warfare and even fake news. Physical copies of the 32-page guide were sent to more than five million Swedish households.

Following suspected acts of sabotage to critical undersea infrastructure such as communications cables in the Baltic and Arctic regions, the Nordic nations – and some Baltic states such as Estonia – moved to create an offline card payment system to be used in the case of internet outage, including from purposeful disruption.

Finland has begun establishing a national system of reserve bank accounts that would give Finns access to their savings if their bank was unable to operate.

Just under half of Norway’s population has access to a bomb shelter. Earlier this year, the government announced plans to mandate the inclusion of bomb shelters in all new large buildings to protect more of the population.

Norwegian authorities say they are preparing for conflict scenarios, particularly in the High North near the Russian border.

“There’s been a major shift in the Norwegian Civil Defence over the past three years,” explains Øistein Knudsen Jr, Chief of Civil Defence of Norway. “We’re focusing on increasing our competence on wartime-related measures, like forced mass evacuations.”

In a nation of just 5.5 million, the civilian population must play a part in supporting emergency services. Norway’s Civil Defence provides training in firefighting and supporting the police.

In Knudsen’s view, the key challenge now is to continue operating in a peacetime world, while also preparing for conflict.

“I was appointed commissioner three years ago, and up until that point, I don’t think there’s been any exercise for 40 years where the military and the Civil Defence Forces exercise together. We do that now,” he says.

In the High North, the organisation is working closely with local police, counties and mayors to ensure connections are strong in the event of a military incursion.

Any operation carried out in the Arctic brings unique challenges. Extreme weather, sparse populations and limited infrastructure mean few resources to call on for logistical support, said Dr Karsten Friis, a security professor at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs.

“You don’t have those train lines, roads, electricity and it’s dark, so all of this complicates military operations,” added Dr Friis. Strategic hubs are few and far between, with long supply lines over large areas making the transport of military equipment a logistical nightmare.

“If you need to forward deploy assets quite substantially at an early phase before conflict, it can be challenging for political reasons because it can be considered escalatory,” says Dr Friis.

Norway’s eastern neighbour Finland shares an 800-mile border with Russia, and is in close proximity to strategically important military sites, such as the Kola Peninsula, which harbours Russia’s maritime second-strike nuclear capability.

The country’s security model relies on national defence courses, organised by the military, which bring together trainees from across society – including politics, media, culture, and critical infrastructure workers – for weeks-long exercises.

The defence ministry also funds the Women’s Defence League, which offers 40 different training programmes, with a focus on everyday security and survival skills. Subjects such as cyber security, how to survive power cuts, and sourcing supplies in hostile environments are regularly discussed.

The League’s organisation and communications manager, Suvi Aksela, said her team had been overwhelmed by demand. “The whole of 2022 [after the invasion] was crazy. Women were calling, emailing and messaging. It was coming from every angle,” she said.

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Demand was so high that courses filled up within minutes and online queues caused the website to crash, she added.

“That just tells you something about the interest at the time,” added Aksela.

“The interest towards our training has been really high and it seems like it didn’t kind of fade off. It’s still ramping up.”

Just a few months ago, when the association opened registrations for its latest courses, demand spiked and reached levels not seen since the first days of the Russian invasion. Within minutes of allowing applications, the majority of programmes reached capacity.

While the organisation had been preparing its members for decades, Aksela believes that the invasion was a wake-up call for a lot of women. “We do have a very aggressive neighbour and we can’t be sure what will happen, so we need to be prepared for everything and anything.”

Finland also holds a National Preparedness Day each year on 7 February, which encourages households to store enough basic supplies, and to be proficient in emergency skills such as first aid, with an underlying message that preparedness is a civic responsibility.

What Britain can learn

Aksela, who has lived in London, suggests the culture of collective responsibility for the nation’s defence is very different in her homeland from back the UK – reflected in recent survey data that showed 83 per cent of Finns would take up arms to defend their country compared with one third of Britons.

“Obviously it’s a different kind of environment,” she said, acknowledging the proximity to Russia was one major factor in the difference.

In the UK, where military conscription ended in 1963, Rishi Sunak’s 2024 election proposal to introduce mandatory national service, where 18-year-olds could apply to serve in the military for a year or spend weekends volunteering in civil resilience programmes, was met with criticism.

On a visit to the Norway-Russia border in February this year, UK Defence Secretary John Healey set out plans to establish a comprehensive defence agreement aimed at deepening military collaboration in the face of escalating Russian aggression.

Aksela believes that an organisation like hers could prove valuable to military preparedness in the UK.

“The most important defence line is between our ears. The mentality and the willingness to do things for your country is something that obviously, alongside the skills, would be useful for the women in the UK, too.”

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