Finland is officially part of the OTAN

Previously, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg called the move “historic,” saying it will make Finland “more secure and the Alliance stronger.” At the same time, he pledged to work hard to get Sweden, whose application has not yet been ratified, into the bloc as soon as possible.

Last May, Sweden and Finland formally applied to join NATO, but Turkey refused to support their membership, arguing that the two Nordic countries harbored in their territories members of organizations that Ankara considers terrorists.

In early March, Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan stated that Helsinki had taken concrete steps to fulfill its promises to crack down on these groups, Reuters reports. Thus, last week the Turkish Parliament ratified the protocol of Finland’s accession to the military bloc.

It should be noted that the Nordic country has about 1,300 kilometers of border with Russia, which means that NATO’s border with the Eurasian country will almost double. In this sense, the measure could further increase tensions between Moscow and the Alliance.

Thus, Russian President Vladimir Putin warned last summer that if NATO military infrastructure were deployed in Finland and Sweden, his country would have to respond reciprocally. “If they want [unirse a la OTAN]go ahead, but now you must understand clearly and precisely […], that in the case of deployment of military contingents and infrastructure there, we will be forced to respond reciprocally and create the same threats for those territories from where threats are created for us. “They are obvious things,” he stressed. With RT

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