Chilling signs Finland could be the next country on Putin's hit list
Ammunition dumps. Armoured vehicle parks. Combat jet shelters. Helicopter pads.
Finland is convinced the appearance of these along its border with Russia means it is next on President Vladimir Putin's invasion list.
Finland was once part of a Russian Empire.
By President Putin's self-professed standards, that means it should be again.
'Peter the Great waged the Great Northern War for 21 years,' he proclaimed in 2022.
'He was not taking away anything. He was returning. This is how it was.'
Putin went on to claim, 'Clearly, it fell to our lot to return and reinforce as well' for his invasion of Ukraine.
Now, with US President Donald Trump washing his hands of his promise to negotiate peace with Moscow in his first 24 hours, and then first 200 days, President Putin is once again thinking big.
Satellite images published by Finnish and US media show Russian military infrastructure along the 1300km border being renovated and reinforced.
International analysts are painting a gloomy picture for a Europe no longer able to rely upon support from its World War II and North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) ally, the United States.
In fact, President Trump has himself expressed great interest in seizing NATO territory by force - Canada and Greenland.
But President Putin has egg on his face.
His anticipated three-day invasion of Ukraine is now in its third year.
His modern tanks, armoured fighting vehicles, artillery and air force have suffered staggering losses.
This, however, is changing fast.
Putin has put his nation on a total war footing. Its entire economy is geared towards fitting out fresh conscripts with new fighting gear. And the production lines are rolling.
Europe is not so well prepared.
Political polarisation and Russian disinformation - and sabotage - campaigns have been sewing confusion. Washington DC's erratic behaviour adds a heightened air of urgency.
Now, Russia is building new warehouses to shelter military vehicles and equipment. Tents are being thrown up to house thousands of troops. Helipads and airfields are being cleared and prepared to accommodate aircraft.
Finland, however, has been here before.
History has taught it to know what comes next.
Finnish Defence Force General Sami Nurmi says his forces are monitoring Russian movements 'very closely' and are 'preparing for the worst'.
Signs and portents
Few analysts and politicians believed Russia's build-up of tanks and troops near the border with Ukraine would lead to invasion. Even less listened to President Putin's belligerent threats to do so.
But he did just that on Thursday, February 24, 2022.
'If the Russians follow their current plans, there can be tens of thousands of new soldiers near the borders of Norway, Finland and the Baltic countries in the coming years,' warns Finnish open source intelligence (OSINT) analyst Emil Kastehelmi.
The threat is not yet imminent.
But Moscow is showing every intention of making it so.
Recent satellite images show heightened activity at four major Russian bases along its borders with Finland and Norway. The old Cold War facilities at Petrozavodsk, Severomorsk-2, and Olenya are being revitalised and expanded.
A relatively undeveloped site at Karmenka, just 60km from the Finnish border, has been expanded to accommodate more than 130 military-grade tents for up to 2000 troops.
Petrozavodsk, about 160km from Finland, has three huge new warehouses to house 150 tanks. The Wall Street Journal reports the city will also get a new Russian army command facility.
Kastehelmi expects further major Russian infrastructure projects to become evident in the coming months.
'It's really difficult to say yet because the war in Ukraine is still heavily ongoing, and achieving a truce seems to be extremely difficult,' he adds.
'The future will show just how heavily the Russians will invest in all of this – military bases, new units, soldiers and so on. But as far as we know now, it's going to be significant.'
Time is on Putin's side
Putin's threats of annexation encompass Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Poland, Moldova, Romania - and essentially any sovereign state that at some point in the past came under the control of something resembling a Russian leader.
And the Kremlin is now 'more willing to use military force in a regional war against one or more European NATO countries if it perceives NATO as militarily weakened or politically divided,' Denmark's defence intelligence service has warned.
The military intelligence agency Estonia warned early last year that Moscow's military reforms could produce a massed army on the scale of the former Soviet Union.
Now, London-based think tank the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) warns that Russia would pose 'a significant military challenge to NATO allies, particularly the Baltic States, as early as 2027'.
It adds that member states must 'consider the military, financial and defence industrial investments needed to reduce dependencies on the US and, in extremis, to prepare for a NATO without any US role'.
Finland, however, is way ahead of them.
It had been subject to Russian rule for much of the 19th Century. And it fought fiercely during World War II to avoid falling under Moscow's yoke again.
The long-neutral nation saw fresh writing on the wall in 2022. It, and similarly neutral Sweden, had their surprise applications to join NATO a year later.
Helsinki has closed its borders with Russia and begun construction of a 200 kilometre long fence to seal off its most exposed approaches.
It's also dramatically increased defence spending to modernise its armed forces.
Thousands of old civil defence shelters are being restored.
And citizens have been ordered to prepare 'grab bags' of supplies for an emergency - and to resist occupational forces.
Shadow war
'The challenge is not whether Europe can fight effectively without the United States – it can, and it might soon have to,' warns German paratrooper and Centre for Intelligence and Security Studies analyst Julian Werner.
'The real question is whether Europe will invest today, while it still has the choice of how it wants to fight before circumstances dictate the way it has to.'
International analysts say the fighting has already begun.
Sabotage. Electronic attacks. Propaganda.
Russian ships, and ships with Russian commanders, have been linked to a series of undersea cable and pipeline breaks.
GPS navigation signals have been jammed in Finland, Norway, Estonia, Lithuania and Poland. These nations have also been contending with co-ordinated campaigns to force desperate Middle Eastern refugees and illegal immigrants across their borders.
And saboteurs and spies are being intercepted and arrested across Europe.
'Russia's primary targets have included transportation, government, critical infrastructure, and industry,' the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) reports.
The Kremlin appears keen to confirm its imperial ambitions.
Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov last month proclaimed the 'dangerous' and 'fascist' NATO alliance controlled territory that had 'never belonged to anyone except the Russian Empire, the Soviet Union.'
According to the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), it's part of a Kremlin campaign to convince its own citizens - and anybody else who wants to listen - that it holds the moral upper ground.
'Russian Presidential Aide and former Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev recently threatened Finland using narratives resembling those that the Kremlin has used to justify its invasion of Ukraine,' it explains, adding that 'Putin and other Russian officials are attempting to use Russia's previous colonisation efforts to set informational conditions and justify future aggression against NATO states.'
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