Russia says to slice power to Finland from Saturday

Russia will suspend power supplies to Finland this end of the week, a provider said on Friday as pressures ascend over Helsinki’s NATO bid following the contention in Ukraine.

“We are compelled to suspend the power import beginning from 14 May,” said RAO Nordic, an auxiliary of Russian state energy holding Inter RAO that sells its power on the Nordic market.

It put the suspension on not having gotten installment for power sold in May and said as a result it was at this point not ready to pay for greater power from Russia.

“This present circumstance is extraordinary and occurred without precedent for north of 20 years of our exchanging history,” RAO Nordic said, trusting the circumstance would “soon” improve and the exchange could continue.

The Finnish power network administrator said it would have the option to manage without Russian power.

“We’re ready for this and it will not be troublesome. We can manage with somewhat additional imports from Sweden and Norway,” Fingrid’s director for functional arranging Timo Kaukonen told AFP.

He said somewhat less than 10% of power consumed in Finland comes from Russia.
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The declaration of the cut in power supplies came one day after Finland’s chiefs pronounced their country should apply to join NATO “right away” – – a seismic change in approach since Russian President Vladimir Putin sent troops to Ukraine on 24 February.

The Kremlin has cautioned Russia would “most certainly” consider Finnish participation to be a danger, while the Russian unfamiliar service said Moscow would be “compelled to make equal strides, military-specialized and other, to address the subsequent dangers”.