Swedish intelligence names Finland as rising Russian espionage target, citing NATO shift and border exposure

• Russia is responsible for most espionage cases exposed in Europe in recent years, according to a Swedish intelligence assessment
• Finland is specifically named as a growing priority target for Russian intelligence, driven by its NATO membership and 1,340-kilometre border with Russia
• Finnish domestic intelligence service SUPO has consistently rated the Russian espionage threat as elevated since 2022
• The Swedish report highlights an inter-Nordic intelligence-sharing dimension as the Nordic countries align their threat assessments

Russia is behind the majority of espionage cases uncovered across Europe in recent years, and Finland is becoming an increasingly important target for Russian intelligence operations. That is the assessment of a Swedish intelligence report, reported by Hufvudstadsbladet, which identifies Finland's shift from military non-alignment to full NATO membership as a key driver of Moscow's heightened interest in Finnish institutions, infrastructure, and decision-makers.

The logic is geographic as much as strategic. Finland shares a 1,340-kilometre border with Russia — the longest of any EU member state — and hosts critical infrastructure that has taken on new significance inside NATO's defence architecture. Ports, telecommunications networks, defence industry facilities, and government agencies all become higher-value intelligence targets once a country joins a military alliance that Russia considers its primary adversary. Before NATO membership, Finnish secrets were interesting to Moscow. Now they are operationally useful: Finnish defence procurement decisions, force deployment plans, and political deliberations feed directly into NATO-wide strategy that the Kremlin wants to understand and, where possible, influence.

Finland's domestic intelligence service, SUPO (Suojelupoliisi), has rated the Russian espionage threat as elevated since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. SUPO's annual reports have warned that Russian intelligence services continue to operate in Finland despite the expulsion of Russian diplomats — a measure Finland, like most EU states, took in 2022. The expelled officials included identified intelligence officers operating under diplomatic cover, but the expulsions did not eliminate the networks. Russia has adapted, relying more heavily on non-traditional recruitment, cyber operations, and intelligence officers stationed in third countries.

What makes this report notable is that it comes from Sweden, not Finland. Swedish intelligence naming a neighbouring Nordic country as a priority target for a foreign power adds an inter-Nordic dimension that goes beyond bilateral Finnish-Russian dynamics. The Nordic countries have accelerated intelligence-sharing since Finland and Sweden began their NATO accession processes, and the Swedish assessment aligns closely with what Finnish and Norwegian services have said independently. Norway's PST (Politiets sikkerhetstjeneste) has similarly identified Russian intelligence activity as the dominant espionage threat on Norwegian territory, particularly around military installations in the north and energy infrastructure along the coast.

The question of counterintelligence capacity is harder to assess from the outside, but the broad picture is visible. Finland's SUPO has roughly 500 employees — a small service for a country with the EU's longest Russian border. Sweden's SÄPO is larger, and Norway's PST has benefited from decades of Cold War-era focus on the Russian threat in the High North. Finland compensated for its smaller service with a deeply embedded culture of national security awareness — a legacy of decades spent as a neutral state living next door to the Soviet Union — but the operational demands of NATO membership are different from those of non-alignment. More targets to protect means more resources needed.

The Swedish report arrives as all five Nordic countries are now, for the first time in history, members of the same military alliance. That alignment creates efficiencies in intelligence-sharing but also concentrates risk: a single successful penetration of one Nordic service could compromise information shared across all five. Russia knows this. The incentive to target the newest, most exposed member — the one with the longest border and the most recent transition — is considerable.

Finland expelled nine Russian diplomats in 2022. It closed its entire eastern border to passenger traffic in late 2023. The 1,340-kilometre frontier is now one of the quietest borders in Europe. The intelligence war along it is not.

Sources: Hufvudstadsbladet