In normal times, Russian tourists would be here to enjoy the arrival of spring – to sail on Lake Saimaa. But Russians and Finns have largely stopped crossing the border.
Finland is about to join Nato. It is a strategic change.
But Finland has always been realistic about life next to its powerful, sometimes threatening, neighbour.
This comes from family stories passed down about the winter war in 1939-1940, in which the Soviet Union invaded and eventually took and kept about 10% of Finnish territory.
You see the realism in continued conscription into the military and in bomb shelters at the ready.
Finland will soon be a Nato territory - doubling the length of the Nato-Russia border.
It means that Nato will only be a two to three-hour drive to St Petersburg – the home city of Vladimir Putin.
The very thing that Putin has sought for years to prevent – Nato expansion – is the very thing he has now brought about.
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