By Anne Kauranen
HELSINKI (Reuters) -The United States is committed to deepening military cooperation with Finland, Finnish Defence Minister Antti Hakkanen said on Thursday, despite U.S. plans to scale back its operations elsewhere on NATO's eastern flank in Europe.
Finland, which joined NATO in 2023 in response to Russia's 2022 invasion of its other neighbour Ukraine, has a bilateral Defence Cooperation Agreement with the U.S., granting the U.S. military unimpeded access to 15 facilities and areas
in Finland.
"We are very pleased that the U.S. is prepared to deepen their cooperation with us," Hakkanen told Reuters onboard the U.S. Navy's missile destroyer, USS Bainbridge, which was docked in Helsinki ahead of a joint NATO exercise in the Baltic Sea next week.
Hakkanen's comments follow a push by Finland's southern neighbours Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania to save a major U.S. security assistance program from Pentagon cuts as President Donald Trump pursues his "America First" foreign policy.
The three Baltic States urged the U.S. Congress to salvage the Baltic Security Initiative, which began in 2020 during President Trump's first term as a response to rising security threats in the region after Russia's 2014 invasion of Ukraine.
Hakkanen said there was no sign of the U.S. wanting to pull out from the bilateral agreement with Finland, which provides the U.S. with broader access and visibility towards the Arctic region.
"For our part, bilaterally, matters are advancing very strongly and deeply across all areas of defence cooperation: materiel, training, operational planning, the implementation of the DCA agreement," he said.
Finnish President Alexander Stubb has close ties with Trump and visited his Mar-a-Lago estate in March. Trump said at the time he looked forward to strengthening ties.
USS Bainbridge's commanding officer, Commander Raymond Miller, called the bilateral ties with Finland "very strong" but added the U.S. withdrawal had not materialised in any way anywhere on the eastern flank.
"I have not seen in my career any indication of our ability to operate with NATO anywhere on the (eastern) flank had been slowed down at all," he told Reuters.
(Reporting by Anne Kauranen in Helsinki; Editing by Sharon Singleton)
