First, the country was a Nazi ally; then it became a NATO stooge. The latest allegation: It’s a reckless Russia-basher that deserves a ruthless response from the Kremlin. Who said Finland was boring?

Amid all the focus on Russia’s war against Ukraine, it is easy to overlook another prime target of Moscow’s imperialist ire. Russia has long used a skewed interpretation of history as a weapon to attack and delegitimize its neighbors—and, if the Kremlin’s latest rhetorical escalation is any guide, it now has Finland in its gunsights. The Finns are understandably nervous, given recent precedent: In 2021, Russian leader Vladimir Putin’s lengthy historical essay denying Ukraine’s claims to statehood and decrying its independence from Russia provided a pretext for his full-scale invasion of Ukraine a few months later.

First, the country was a Nazi ally; then it became a NATO stooge. The latest allegation: It’s a reckless Russia-basher that deserves a ruthless response from the Kremlin. Who said Finland was boring?

Amid all the focus on Russia’s war against Ukraine, it is easy to overlook another prime target of Moscow’s imperialist ire. Russia has long used a skewed interpretation of history as a weapon to attack and delegitimize its neighbors—and, if the Kremlin’s latest rhetorical escalation is any guide, it now has Finland in its gunsights. The Finns are understandably nervous, given recent precedent: In 2021, Russian leader Vladimir Putin’s lengthy historical essay denying Ukraine’s claims to statehood and decrying its independence from Russia provided a pretext for his full-scale invasion of Ukraine a few months later.

The details might seem arcane: Who really cares these days about Finland’s tangled history during World War II, let alone the legal status of the Grand Duchy of Finland within the old tsarist empire? But history is not an academic discipline in Russia. It is an instrument of power, used to strengthen the Kremlin’s grip on society, legitimize aggression, and undermine other countries’ sovereignty.

Moscow wields history with fiery emotion. Take, for example, former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, who posted on X on Jan. 2 that the Bolsheviks’ recognition of Finnish independence from Russia in 1917 was a “blunder” (that presumably should now be reversed) and that the country must pay for its “vile Russophobia.”

Painted by Western commentators as a liberal-minded modernizer during his 2008-12 stint as head of state, Medvedev has assumed the mantle of Russia’s chief Finland-basher. This time, the specific target of his bile was “some guy called Stubb.” That was a derogatory reference to Finnish President Alexander Stubb, one of the savviest figures ever to have held high office in Finland. His English is flawless, and his golf is pretty handy, too, which has enabled him to strike up an unlikely but useful friendship with U.S. President Donald Trump. Unlike past generations of Finnish leaders, he comes across as chatty, even extroverted.

The Finnish president’s New Year’s message, which prompted Medvedev’s tirade, would have struck most outsiders as anodyne. On Ukraine, Stubb said—with understatement—that “we cannot be certain that Russia is ready for........

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