Two headquarters of the North Atlantic Alliance are to be established in Finland, public broadcaster Yle reported, citing sources.
It should be noted that one headquarters (NATO’s ground forces in the Nordic countries) will be located in the town of Mikkeli in southern Finland, near the border with Russia, and the second, the headquarters of NATO’s advanced ground forces (FLF), in the north.
According to Yle, the decision to locate the NATO headquarters near Russia, in Mikkeli, has already been made and will be announced in the near future. Initially, in addition to the Finns, several dozen foreign officials will work there; over time, their number may increase; the headquarters will be subordinate to the headquarters in Norfolk, on the east coast of the United States.
The second headquarters is planned to be located in the Finnish Arctic, in Rovaniemi or Sodankylä, and will be headed by Sweden. The FLF staff will rotate when there are about a thousand troops in Finland. In exceptional cases, their number can increase to several thousand, as specified in the message cited by TASS.
Helsinki is currently discussing with the US, UK and Norway the issue of future deployment of military personnel in the FLF, and the Finnish FLF model is expected to differ from those available in other countries, Yle reports.
