U.S. Army National Guard Soldiers assigned to the Virginia National Guard’s 276th Engineer Battalion, 329th Regional Support Group confer with leaders from the Finnish Defence Forces May 28, 2026, during the culminating event of Exercise Karelian Sword 26 near Kouvola, Finland. Karelian Sword is a multinational training exercise designed to strengthen interoperability and readiness for the more than 10,000 troops participating from across the Finnish Defence Forces and partner nations. Approximately 35 Virginia National Guard Soldiers, primarily assigned to the 237th Engineer Company, will spend two weeks in Finland training alongside their Finnish counterparts. (U.S. Army National Guard photo by Sgt. 1st Class Terra C. Gatti)

Twenty-three Finnish conscripts were exposed to potentially damaging noise after an object exploded in a campfire during an exercise at the Kyläjärvi training area in Sodankylä. The incident occurred while conscripts from the Lapland Jaeger Battalion were spending their evening free time around the fire.

The incident adds to a series of recent noise-exposure accidents at the Jääkäriprikaati. Just two days earlier, conscripts were exposed to the blast of a blank cartridge after an assault rifle discharged accidentally during weapons training; in April, 37 conscripts at the same brigade were exposed to noise in another accidental blank-cartridge discharge.

Read the entire piece in Ilta-Sanomat