Nordic countries to boost defence co-operation

The five Nordic countries are to step up their defence co-operation as a direct response to the Russian military threat in the Baltic Sea region.

The defence ministers of Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden and the foreign minister of Iceland on Friday published a declaration in a Norwegian newspaper that seeks to increase the number of joint exercises, intelligence sharing and processing of cyber material.

Separately, the prime ministers of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania said they would explore joint arms procurement as they look to increase the efficiency of their defence spending.

Both moves come amid rising regional worries about Russia's intentions following its invasion and annexation of Crimea last year. Russian aeroplanes have violated the airspace of Estonia, Finland and Sweden while there have been several near misses with civilian aircraft in Denmark and Sweden.

"Russia's conduct represents the gravest challenge to European security. As a consequence, the security situation in the Nordic countries' adjacent areas has become significantly worsened during the past year . . . we must be prepared to face possible crises or incidents," the five Nordic ministers wrote in Aftenposten.

They added that Russia's actions rather than its rhetoric needed to be followed and pointedly noted the big increase recently in Moscow's military spending.

"It has shown that they are prepared to make practical and effective use of military means in order to reach their political goals, even when this involves violating principles of international law . . . The Russian military are acting in a challenging way along our borders, and there have been several border violations of countries around the Baltic Sea," the ministers continued.

Denmark, Iceland and Norway are members of Nato but Sweden and Finland are not. Opinion polls in Sweden and Finland have shown rising support for Nato membership and security has been one of the main topics of the Finnish election campaign ahead of next weekend's vote.

The Nordic declaration contains no suggestion of a commitment to mutual defence along the lines of Nato's Article 5, but it promised several concrete steps for deeper co-operation.

These include: better information sharing about movements in each country's airspace; discussion of how to defend against cyber attacks; more joint exercises and allowing one country's air force to use another's bases in case of bad weather; and deeper co-operation in international missions such as Afghanistan, Mali and Iraq.

The three Baltic countries, all members of Nato, have a combined population of 6m people and only Estonia currently meets the military alliance's target of spending 2 per cent of GDP on defence. Much of each country's military hardware is incompatible with each other, leading some experts to suggest joint procurement as essential.

Meeting in Vilnius on Friday, the three prime ministers said they would now explore this as being "vitally important for the efficient use of defence spending".

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