NATO commands – Stubb and Orpo obey

There is no doubt that the order to remove nuclear weapons restrictions from Finnish legislation came from the military alliance NATO. This is also admitted by Janne Kuusela, Director General of the Ministry of Defence (STT 6.3.2026).

According to Kuusela, the decision to remove the nuclear weapons ban included in the Nuclear Energy Act was made for two reasons.

"With NATO membership, Finland received information about nuclear deterrence that was not previously available. Another reason is that NATO is changing and modernizing deterrence," says the Director General of the Ministry of Defence.

The government's proposal regarding the NATO Act stated at the time that Finland's accession to NATO does not require changes to the laws regarding nuclear explosives.

Kuusela now says that many changes were identified in the legislation already during the NATO membership application phase. According to Kuusela, many things in Finnish legislation were made "in a very different era and under the conditions of non-alignment."

According to Kuusela, "the legislative change will move Finland into the mainstream of NATO countries, which has no legislative obstacles to maintaining the nuclear deterrent and its credibility." According to the Director General, the reason behind the proposed change is "the desire to strengthen Finland's security in an international situation that is difficult to predict."

Kuusela believes that the change will also improve preventive deterrence. The purpose is “to also ensure that NATO's deterrence, including all its components, is credible” and “to create the highest possible threshold for military action against Finland and the entire alliance.”

Nuclear weapons could be imported to Finland in the future

The government led by Prime Minister Petteri Orpo (Congress)The government proposes that nuclear weapons could be imported into Finland in the future under certain conditions. President Alexander Stubb claims that a legislative change to allow the import and transit of nuclear weapons would be in Finland's interest.

According to the current Nuclear Energy Act, the import, manufacture, possession and detonation of nuclear explosives in Finland is prohibited. Transport through Finnish territory is also prohibited. The ban is enshrined in both the Nuclear Energy Act and the Criminal Code. Now the government is proposing to remove all restrictions.

Stubb refers to “conventional forces, missiles and nuclear weapons” and says that “it is in Finland’s interest that we have no legislative obstacles to any of these.” According to the president, this means that “we can be fully involved in NATO’s nuclear weapons planning.”

The government intends toAt the same time, nuclear explosives could be allowed in Finland “if they were related to the defense of Finland, NATO’s common defense or defense cooperation.” In the future, NATO-Finland could also transport and perhaps also store nuclear explosives.

With the change, the government says it wants to "ensure the comprehensiveness of Finland's and NATO's military deterrence and smooth cooperation" with NATO allies.

According to Kuusela of the Ministry of Defence, NATO's nuclear deterrent is being prepared for all different situational options, various exceptional situations, crises and wars. "The stronger and more credible the nuclear deterrent is, the higher the threshold is for anyone to challenge NATO's common collective defence," says Kuusela.

Finland has been negotiating the lifting of all nuclear weapons restrictions with the military alliance NATO and also with NATO's two nuclear-armed states, the United States and the United Kingdom, for a long time. There have also been some discussions with the third nuclear-armed state, France, in NATO.

The foreign policy leadership accepted NATO's policies without hesitation.

Finland's foreign policy leadership has approved an assessment made by the Ministry of Defence based on NATO guidelines. The Government's Ministerial Committee on Foreign and Security Policy recently discussed the matter and approved a decision in principle to remove all legislative obstacles to nuclear weapons from Finnish law.

The preparation has been done in secret and not even all ministers or members of parliament have been informed in detail.

Both Finnish and international negotiation sources previously stated that Finland would not have been accepted as a NATO member if Finland had remained outside the work of the NATO nuclear defense planning group when it joined NATO, as France has done as a NATO country.

Participation in the nuclear deterrent was agreed upon during Finland's accession talks at NATO headquarters, Iltalehti claimed on March 6, 2026. NATO sources have told Iltalehti that Finland's then-leadership promised to make Finnish legislation compatible with Finland's NATO commitments.

By the government leadership, the newspaper probably means President Sauli Niinistö, Prime Minister Sanna Marin (Social Democratic Party) and Defense Minister Antti Kaikkonen (Centre Party). They were also mentioned in journalist Lauri Nurmi's article, and so far none of them have seen fit to correct the claim.

There was only a short period left in the electoral term, so amending the Nuclear Energy Act was left to the next government.

"The bill has been prepared for a long time, and it has been discussed in the government's Foreign and Security Policy Committee in TP-Utva," President Alexander Stubb said in early March.

Negotiations to lift the nuclear ban began immediately after the presidential election.

Discussions about removing the nuclear weapons ban from Finnish legislation have actually been going on for roughly as long as Alexander Stubb became president in early 2024. Stubb called for a change to the Nuclear Energy Act and the removal of nuclear weapons restrictions from Finnish legislation as a presidential candidate for the National Coalition Party during the election campaign.

In the final weeks of the election campaign, the removal of nuclear weapons restrictions from Finnish legislation became the central controversial issue of the presidential election. Former Foreign Minister Pekka Haavisto (Greens), who lost the presidential election to Stubb, disagreed with the removal and did not accept Stubb's nuclear weapons policies.

President Sauli Niinistö was also critical of Stubb's nuclear weapons talk. In Kainuun Sanomat on September 19, 2023, Stubb stated that he would not act on the matter "without a mandate from the Western allies." The policies presented by NATO and the military alliance during the negotiations with the nuclear-armed states were what Stubb described as the mandate, or green light, for the law change.

Both President Stubb and former President Niinistö have remained completely silent in public about the transit or deployment of nuclear weapons in Finland since the 2024 presidential election. And strangely enough, Haavisto has also been silent on the matter.

The negotiations and discussions with “allies” on nuclear deterrence have not been reported to Parliament in any detail. The opposition has been kept completely out of the most important discussions.

The chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, Johannes Koskinen (sd.), received a summary of the government's plans a little earlier than the other members of the committee. The chairman of the Defense Committee, Heikki Autto (kok.), reportedly received information about the progress of the amendment projects earlier than Koskinen. The chairman of the Social Democratic Party, Antti Lindtman, was among those who had been informed about the government's legislative amendment project a little earlier.

The media pool silenced the mainstream media

What has been characteristic of Finland during the Mediapool era is that the mainstream media has not asked President Stubb a single question during his entire term in office – at least not publicly.  whether he still supports the lifting of Finland's nuclear weapons restrictions, which he proposed during the election campaign. However, some editors-in-chief have been better informed about Stubb's projects behind the scenes than others.

The fact that key government ministers have not once responded to the numerous questions posed in Parliament by MP Johannes Yrttiaho (left) about the lifting of the nuclear ban and discussions with NATO allies is illustrative of the information suppression. The ministers have remained silent, even though MPs should have unlimited access to information.

Yrttiaho has also not received support for his questions from any other MP, including from the Left Alliance.

Only now, for example, has Iltalehti begun to notice that Yrttiaho has been better informed about the course of events than other MPs and also many ministers, even though he has not received answers to his questions.

Finland joined NATO without any conditions

Under the leadership of President Niinistö, all parliamentary parties approved the decision that Finland would join the military alliance NATO without any conditions. The Social Democrats, the Left Alliance and the Greens in particular still owe their supporters an explanation as to why they did this.

When Finland joined NATO, it was publicly announced that there were no plans to change the nuclear weapons restrictions in the Nuclear Energy Act, let alone remove them. It was not known at the time that President Niinistö, Prime Minister Marin and Minister of Defense Kaikkonen had allegedly already promised NATO that the law restricting nuclear weapons would be changed later.

However, Antti Häkkänen, the deputy chairman of the opposition National Coalition Party, had already hinted several times at the time that the Nuclear Energy Act could be amended in the future. This is precisely why Markus Mustajärvi (left), the MP who proposed rejecting NATO membership in Parliament, proposed that Finland should not accept nuclear weapons, foreign bases or permanent foreign troops on its territory as an accompaniment to the NATO decision.

What attracted attention during the vote was that the MPs from the Left Alliance, led by Li Andersson, who supported NATO membership, did not support Mustajärvi's proposal. They sat in their seats in the parliament chamber, but did not press the voting button at all. Mustajärvi's proposal fell in the vote.

Prime Minister Orpo's contradictory speeches

Prime Minister Petteri Orpo (Congress) said in an interview in Parliament on February 7, 2024, that it is clear that nuclear deterrence is an essential part of the deterrence that Finland needs, above all in relation to Russia. "We have a common starting point in building NATO-Finland, that we are very open. We look at the elements with which we integrate into NATO piece by piece."

Transparency has actually been quite a long way from anything the Orpo government has done in removing restrictions on nuclear weapons.

During the Prime Minister's interview session on February 18, 2024, Orpo stated, that, like President Stubb, he too believes there are strong grounds for allowing the transit of nuclear weapons. It would involve transporting nuclear weapons in Finnish airspace, waters and on land. According to Orpo, the president's views are of importance when the issue is being considered in cooperation between the president and the government.

In a statement to STT on 6 March 2024, Orpo reminded that Finland had already decided when applying for NATO membership that there would be no restrictions on the content of membership. “However, details still remained to be resolved, such as how the possible transport of nuclear weapons through Finland will be approached in the future.”

The Prime Minister also stated that "it is important to also get an assessment from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Defence of what is necessary for Finland's credible defence." According to Orpo, the matter should be carefully assessed and investigated, and then discussed openly and parliamentaryly.

Orpo thinks it would be a good idea to make a policy, whatever it is.

Prime Minister Kristersson would allow nuclear weapons during war – Orpo does not

Prime Minister Orpo appeared on the radio together with Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson on 13 May 2024 in connection with the Nordic Prime Ministers' Meeting. Yle's Pirjo Auvinen said that Sweden and Finland have completely different positions on wartime nuclear weapons. "Sweden's Kristersson would allow them on Swedish soil, Orpo would not change Finland's current position."

Kristersson saw no obstacles to NATO nuclear weapons being stationed in Sweden during wartime. According to Auvinen, there is a law in Sweden that prohibits nuclear weapons from being stationed on Swedish soil during peacetime. “It is completely different during wartime,” the Swedish Prime Minister repeated several times.

Orpo stated after the meeting of the Nordic prime ministers that Finland does not intend to follow the example of Sweden's Kristersson. "We have now had a clear policy that there is no need to open the Nuclear Energy Act now and we can continue within the framework of the current legislation," said Orpo.

So I saw Prime Minister Orpo in the spring of 2024.

Now, however, the sound on the clock is completely different.

Photo: Government of Finland/Lauri Heikkinen, image cropped, source: Wikimedia Commons CC BY 4.0 License