Russia called Finland’s NATO membership a “security attack” and said countermeasures would be needed.
“The Kremlin believes that this is an aggravation of the situation. NATO enlargement is an attack on our security and Russia’s national interests. And this forces us to take action in tactical and strategic terms,” explained Dmitry Peskov, a Kremlin spokesman. The voice of the Kremlin, he told AFP.
Finland became NATO’s 31st member, in a historic strategic shift brought about by Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, which doubles the US-led alliance’s border.
During the afternoon, the flag-raising ceremony of the 31st member of the Atlantic Alliance will take place. João Gomes Cravinho will participate in the meeting on behalf of Portugal.
Jens Stoltenberg also announced that the Member States will discuss ways to ensure that the future of Ukraine remains a more autonomous country in Defense, now that there will be a “transition” of the weapons used, sent to, or sent to the West, substituting the time of day Soviet Union.
With the growing uncertainty regarding the reorganization of international geopolitics, the member states will also discuss the main threats to the Atlantic Alliance, namely “Iran, Russia and China,” Stoltenberg said. Tehran and Beijing are accused by the alliance countries of supporting Moscow in the war and Iranian drones have been flying over the skies of Ukraine for months.
There is still no evidence that China is supplying Russia with weapons, but the United States and the United Kingdom have been warning of this possibility for weeks. The meeting between Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin two weeks ago in Moscow accentuated this doubt.
The NATO Secretary General considered this Monday that this Tuesday would be “a good day” for the alliance, since Finland will close one of the flanks of Russia, with whom it shares a long border.
Unlike most countries, Helsinki continued to invest in Defense after the Cold War period (1947 to 1991 and Stoltenberg mentioned this, repeating that the Kremlin “wanted less NATO, but will have just the opposite”.
Still at the gates of NATO is Sweden, which formally applied to join at the same time as Finland, a process that is still pending parliamentary ratification by Turkey and Hungary.
Source: TSF
