Winter War or the Soviet Union's Invasion of Finland - Facts

This short post contains some excerpts from a large article on Wikipedia, I recommend reading it to understand that after 80 years nothing has changed in the top military-political leadership of Russia, even the vocabulary remained of those times, no creativity.

On 26 November 1939, an incident was reported near the Soviet village of Mainila, near the border with Finland. A Soviet border guard post had been shelled by an unknown party resulting, according to Soviet reports, in the deaths of four and injuries of nine border guards. Research conducted by several Finnish and Russian historians later concluded that the shelling was a false flag operation since there were no artillery units there, and it was carried out from the Soviet side of the border by an NKVD unit with the purpose of providing the Soviets with a casus belli and a pretext to withdraw from the non-aggression pact. Soviet war games held in March 1938 and 1939 had been based on a scenario in which border incidents taking place at the village of Mainila would spark the war.

On 30 November 1939, Soviet forces invaded Finland with 21 divisions, totalling 450,000 men, and bombed Helsinki, killing about 100 citizens and destroying more than 50 buildings. In response to international criticism, Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov stated that the Soviet Air Force was not bombing Finnish cities but rather dropping humanitarian aid to the starving Finnish population; they were sarcastically dubbed Molotov bread baskets by Finns.

On 1 December 1939, the Soviet Union formed a puppet government, named the Finnish Democratic Republic, to govern Finland after Soviet conquest. Headed by Otto Wille Kuusinen, the government operated in the parts of Finnish Karelia occupied by the Soviets, and was also referred to as the "Terijoki Government", after the village of Terijoki, the first settlement captured by the advancing Red Army. After the war, the puppet government was reabsorbed into the Soviet Union. From the very outset of the war, working-class Finns stood behind the legitimate government in Helsinki. Finnish national unity against the Soviet invasion was later called the spirit of the Winter War.

Question for reflection - do you notice any similarities with the rhetoric of modern Russia in relation to Ukraine?

wikipedia article – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter_War