Mystery and fear haunt tiny Finnish island which neighbours Russia


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“Personally, I don’t think this operation was just about money laundering. There has to be something else,” he said.


Niklas Granholm, deputy director of studies at FOI, the Swedish Defence Research Agency, Division for Defence Analysis, did not rule out that the islands that were raided could have been part of a money-laundering scam. But he added that their helipads, multiple docks, barrackslike structures and location near Finnish military facilities suggested possible preparations for “some kind of hybrid warfare.”


Airiston Helmi’s seafront headquarters has a helipad and multiple surveillance cameras like Melnikov’s island, as well as a decommissioned military landing craft that has been converted into a sauna and three other vessels. Standing guard next to the main entrance of the company’s office is a fashion mannequin dressed in military fatigues with a cracked plastic head.


Its basement, according to a recent report in Iltalehti, a Finnish newspaper, contained a communications centre with sophisticated equipment far beyond what an ordinary tourism or property company would need.


Thomas Willberg, a dairy farmer whose land abuts Airiston Helmi’s headquarters on the mainland, said he was asked several times by the Russian and his associates whether he would be willing to sell his cow patch. He declined.


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