Europe must boost its military spending and better coordinate its defence amid hybrid threats from Russia and suspected sabotage of Baltic Sea cables, Finnish President Alexander Stubb said in an interview.
Europe’s “holiday from history is now over”, he told news channel Euronews late Tuesday.
Stubb’s remarks came after he hosted a meeting Tuesday of NATO leaders from countries bordering the Baltic Sea in Helsinki.
Concern about the region’s security has mounted after the severing of several subsea telecom and power cables in recent months, incidents that experts and politicians say are part of hybrid war actions orchestrated by Russia.
“There’s a lot of mal-intent coming from the Russian Federation at this particular moment, and it’s the new normal that we have to live with,” Stubb told Euronews.
“We need to hike up our defence expenditure because our holiday from history is now over,” he said.
“It is in our vested self-interest to promote and spend more on defence,” he added.
Europe also needed to “pool our defences better” and cooperate closely with the United States, Stubb said.
Following their meeting on Tuesday, leaders from Baltic Sea countries and NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte announced the launch of a Baltic Sea patrol mission, Baltic Sentry, to secure critical underwater infrastructure.
It will also monitor Russia’s “shadow fleet” — often ageing ships operating under opaque ownership that carry Russian crude oil and petroleum products, embargoed since the invasion of Ukraine.
Baltic Sentry will involve frigates, maritime patrol aircraft, submarines and drones.
Leaders have expressed growing concern over security in the Baltic Sea region.
“We are obviously not at war right now. But the gray zones are becoming more and more important,” Sweden’s Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said Tuesday.
On Sunday, he had said Sweden was “not at war, but there is not peace either”.
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