GLOBAL NEWS FLASHES EXCERPTS (w/c: 05APR21)
SOURCED BY: Dr. Namsremmah, U.S. Naval Institute
- Bi-lateral Agreement between Russia and Finland agreed, NATO reacts
As of December of 2020, the Finnish Ministry of Social Affairs and Health has reported 300,000 deaths as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, with nearly an additional 250,000 persons, aged 19-32, reported as currently infected and an additional 50,000 currently hospitalized and in critical condition. As of the 29th of April, there have been reports from local health officials of a genetic match to the Indian quadruple variant in recent deaths, which has triggered fire-alarms amongst epidemiologists within the World Health Organization as being potentially immune or resistant against the current AstraZeneca and Pfizer vaccine. Finland has witnessed the worst of any fatality rate in any European country since the start of 2021.
Desperate to buy more vaccines and provide an injection of cash into the countries' failing industrial sector, mostly centered around the south and southeast of the country, Finnish President Virtanen announced an agreement with the Russia government to exchange rights to drill for natural gas in the Baltic Sea, within the Finnish Exclusive Economic Zone for nearly $320 billion dollars, which the Finnish President promised to be devoted to sustained revilatization of the hardest hit industrial sectors of the Finnish economy.
The fine print of the treaty, however, reveals a potentially larger concern for NATO. According to several international law experts, the Finnish-Russian COVID-19 Economic Revitalization Treaty of 2021 would not only grant diplomatic immunity to any Russian actors within designated areas deemed necessary to explore the natural gas reserves in the Finnish Exclusive Economic Zone, but also would exempt the same groups of normal Finnish policing and security functions throughout their supply chain, mostly along the Finnish coastal highway and in the minicipality of Virolahti. Although not an annexation of Finnish territory, the private gas and security contractors allowed within southern Finland are a radical step by the current Finnish administration that caught many NATO allies off-guard.
More so, nearly all Finnish political and economic opposistion groups have called for nation-wide protests, calling upon President Virtanen to step-down for not only failing to contain the COVID pandemic but also sacrificing Finnish sovereignty for Russian bribes, most of which are slotted to benefit President Virtanen's primary demographics around Helsinki. The cities of Tampere, Turku, Lahti, and Kotka within Finland seemed awestruck by the announcement, disclaiming that they had not been consulted at any point within the treaty's negotiations.
NATO Secretary General, Stoltenberg, seemed exceedingly perturbed by the announcement, calling upon the Finnish parliament to denounce the President's decision to allow, in his words, "Russian private military contractors within [Finnish] territory without clear parameters of residency or purpose whilst in the territory of Finland." Although a member of the European Union, Finland is not a part of the North Altantic Treaty of 1942, which would recognize the Russian security presence in Finland as a hostile action and occupation, and allow for broader western military reaction against the Russian incursion. Nonetheless, with the ongoing Ukrainian border tension with Russian, Secretary-General Stoltenberg has requested the US Army to recall the 506th IRRU to Ramstein Air Base, Germany, to allow for a wider range of potential kinetic and policy reactions to further Russian advances along the eastern European front.
While President Virtanen has not yet provided a public comment on the accusations of Secretary General Stoltenberg, several Finnish politicians and union leaders have called upon their constituencies to actively protest and passively interfere with any obvious sign of Russian investigation into Finnish natural gas reserves. Already a report has surfaced of derelict observation of the Geneva Convention by suspected Russian private military contractors within the town of Virolahti, although the accusation has yet to be confirmed by any independent source.
These published news excerpts are the fictional works of the S-2 Intelligence Team of the 506th IRRU.
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