The Finnish army has started a "24-7 live-monitoring" operation following a Russian military air-force drill that is occurring just 150 miles from the border between the two countries.

It has people asking: Is Finland the next Crimea?

After #Crimea, do we need to talk about #Finland and #Belarus? #Putin's former advisor Andrei Illarionov thinks so: http://t.co/hPnAJRBIKy

— The Moscow Times (@MoscowTimes) March 31, 2014

The Finnish army's alertness comes after a former advisor to Russian President Vladimir Putin said the ex-KGB agent might also want Finland.

“Putin’s view is that he protects what belongs to him and his predecessors,” Putin’s former chief economic adviser Andrei Illarionov told Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagbladet. "Parts of Georgia, Ukraine, Belarus, the Baltic states and Finland are states where Putin claims to have ownership."

That's far-fetched, right?

Why it's far-fetched

Unlike Ukraine, which was caught flat-footed in the midst of a tug-of-war between Europe and Russia, Finland is wholly in the west's geopolitical camp. The Nordic country, which has a population of 5.4 million people and a GDP of $198 billion, joined the European Union in 1995. Finland is not a NATO country, so it doesn't get full-fledged NATO protection, but the EU does have a number of treaties and agreements in place that all-but-guarantee a massive military response should Russia begin amassing more military units on the Finnish border.

"It might not be a NATO member, but it is in the European Union and you can bet that if Russia were to start invading members of the EU, the EU would have something to say about it," Oliver Bullough, author of Last Man In Russia, told NBC News.

Why it's not

"The people of Helsinki are nervous," Andrew Kutchins, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told NBC News of Finland's alarmed state. "What Putin is doing is sending shock waves through Europe."

Russia has quite the history with Finland. And if Putin's actions in Crimea are any indication, it's safe to assume the Russian president has a fondness for restoring the greatness of the Russian regional empire. For starters, the two countries share a massive border: It spans 833 miles, and winds through forests and countrysides, defined by no major waterways or natural features. The country served as a battlefield, of sorts, between Sweden and Russia over much of the 18th century. Then in 1809, Finland officially became part of the Russian federation. It remained an autonomous "Grand Duchy" in the Russian Empire until the end of 1917, when World War I brought change to the continent and independence for Finland. The two countries would go to the battlefield twice during World War II, and develop a symbiotic relationship during much of the Cold War, which ended only with the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s.

"This country was going through such hard times then that realistically it was incapable of protecting its interests,” Putin has said of the 1991 handover of Crimea to Ukraine.

Is it so far-fetched to see him saying the same of Finland, too?

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