Okay team, let's take a look at a brain-dead talking point …

This assumes that Sweden and Finland will actually, y'know, join NATO. Because the Turks are not happy about these most recent developments.

This also assumes that Sweden and Finland will participate fully in NATO and not have a large number of caveats to their membership - the Russians seem to have signaled they have no problem if they join on the model of Norway, which heavily limits foreign basing.

Well let's look at the numbers. Sweden first.

The Swedish Army is capable of forming a grand total of two brigades right now. This is the equivalent of Latvia or Estonia and is insufficient to even secure the country in the event of a war, let along attack anyone.

Sweden has 71 fighters, all older Saab 39 Gripens.

Finland has 55 fighters (F-18s), with 64 new F-35s on order to replace them.

None of this is particularly spectacular or a large threat to the Russians.

The Finnish Army can put together six brigades capable of offensive combat operations, and another six territorial defense brigades for security purposes.

This is something like 150% of Lithuania.

I've seen people say that Finland has the ability to mobilize something like 400,000 reservists, but these would be light infantry with no supporting arms.

I very much doubt that a postmodern European welfare state would ratify the use of human wave tactics.

And as the primary Russian worry in the immediate term would be a defensive rather than offensive war, that mass of Finnish reservists would be of little use in attacking anything.

By comparison, pre-war Ukraine had no fewer than fifty-one brigades between its army and paramilitary National Guard, plus another twenty-five territorial defense brigades.

It actually had a larger army than much of Europe combined, albeit without an air force to match.

As such Russia's postwar strategic situation in the event of victory in Ukraine but Finland and Sweden joining NATO would be the equivalent of replacing a massive, well-armed enemy to its south with two more NATO Baltic states.

This would place Kaliningrad under somewhat greater threat and turn the Baltic Sea into even more of a six-way shooting gallery than it already is, but compared to the prospect of corps after corps of Ukrainian troops aimed at Moscow it's a very acceptable trade.

And it's not like the Russians haven't done an economy of force effort on that front while fighting a much more dangerous enemy to the south before.

Furthermore I find the prospect of sustained rearmament in Europe postwar to be fairly remote - Europe will be suffering economically over the next couple years and appetites for increased military spending during a recession will, I suspect, quickly dwindle.

/end

Okay team, let's take a look at a brain-dead talking point that's been making the rounds lately. Namely, that regardless of the outcome of the war in Ukraine that Russia's strategic position will worsen due to the accession of Sweden and Finland to NATO.

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