By Olha Hembik | 2026-04-23

Finland is preparing for a fight it hopes never comes, but is not betting on it.

The Finnish Security and Intelligence Service (Supo) is recruiting Russian-speaking agents in a public drive that analysts say doubles as a warning to Moscow.

The positions are permanent, based across the country, and open to people with dual citizenship. Potential recruits will be contacted this month. According to Supo, agents will gather information used for decisions "at the state level" -- information that "could change Finland's direction."

The announcement comes as Supo's National Security Overview 2026 identifies Russia as the country's most serious intelligence threat. Supo head Juha Martelius, presenting the report to Finland's Parliament Intelligence Oversight Committee in Helsinki, said Russian intelligence is actively collecting information on Finland's foreign and border policies, NATO membership, and critical infrastructure. He added that regardless of how the war in Ukraine ends, Russia's strategic ambitions will remain. Once the war is over, the intelligence and information operations Russia is running in Ukraine could shift to other regions.

A new reality

Finland joined NATO in April 2023, after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Political scientist and international relations expert Stanislav Zhelikhovsky said that accession placed Finland in "a new reality."

By going public with the Supo recruitment drive, Zhelikhovsky said, Helsinki is sending Moscow a deliberate message.

"In releasing into the information space news that Supo is recruiting Russian-speaking agents, the Finns are making it clear to Russia that they are preparing appropriately for an array of potential provocations from them," he told Kontur.

A direct military invasion is unlikely in the near term, Zhelikhovsky said. Cyberattacks, infrastructure sabotage, and information operations are the more probable vectors.

"Helsinki is sending a message that it's ready for those kinds of scenarios," he said.

He pointed to Finland's decision in spring 2024 to close its border with Russia after Moscow orchestrated a manufactured migration crisis, sending undocumented migrants from third countries to the Finnish frontier to destabilize public order. The move reflected a deeper pattern, Zhelikhovsky said -- one rooted in Finland's historical memory and its long experience defending its sovereignty against its eastern neighbor.

Why Russian speakers matter

Recruiting Russian speakers is not primarily about translation or text analysis, analysts say. It is about understanding how Russian institutions think.

"Recruiting Russian speakers isn't important for translating texts or information or for performing analysis," Zhelikhovsky said. "The way I see it, it's about the ability to more deeply understand intentions, narratives and the conduct of the Russian entities, from the military ones to the intelligence services."

Ukrainian political consultant and active military serviceman Oleksandr Antoniuk offered a complementary read. He described the public recruitment drive as "a media campaign with an information and psychological effect."

Beyond the messaging, he told Kontur, the news about recruiting candidates with dual citizenship could signal an intent to build a spy network inside Russia.

"The Finnish services are clearly sending the message that they are moving forward and keeping a finger on the pulse," Antoniuk said.

Agents will need to analyze news, official statements, documents, and social media -- reading propaganda, understanding slang, and parsing context and hidden meaning. This is particularly important in hybrid warfare, Zhelikhovsky said.

A society built to respond

Finland's preparation goes beyond intelligence hiring. Anastasiia Melnychenko, a doctoral researcher at the University of Turku and a Ukrainian war refugee, said Finnish society is unusually well-positioned to process and respond to threat.

After Russia's first invasion of Ukraine in 2014, Finland introduced media literacy courses in government and schools and distributed brochures to Helsinki residents detailing how to survive 72 hours in a crisis scenario. "People are enlisting in the army. They're interested. Finnish society is one of the best at properly perceiving a threat, and it's one of the most prepared," Melnychenko told Kontur.

Supo also flags other dimensions of the Russian threat. Oil tankers in Russia's so-called shadow fleet are sailing the Baltic Sea without adequate insurance or compliance with safety standards, raising the risk of accidents on heavily trafficked routes. China, meanwhile, is conducting its own intelligence operations against Finland, focused on human intelligence and cyber espionage.

Supo's assessment is blunt: even if events take a positive turn, relations between Russia and Finland will not return to their pre-war state. Regaining trust will take time and will require evidence that Russia has stopped treating its neighbors' sovereignty as secondary to its own interests.