Finland Holds War Drill Alongside U.S. Soldiers Ahead of NATO Application

NIINISALO, Finland—Armored vehicles kicked up tails of dirt as fatigue-clad soldiers, their faces freshly daubed in camouflage paint, crouched in the pine forest here Wednesday, part of a sweeping military drill before Finland prepares to break decades of defense policy and applies to join NATO.

More than 3,000 Finnish troops are taking part in the two-week exercise alongside hundreds of American, British, Estonian and Latvian soldiers, shadowed by growing fears that Russia’s war in Ukraine could spread to other parts of Europe. A series of other drills involving members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and its allies have been held this spring and will continue into the summer and include the world’s largest ground-based integrated air and missile exercise, in Poland and the Baltic states, in June.