Because of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine in 2014, Finland reportedly became an official member of the military alliance NATO on Tuesday. This decision was triggered by the events in Ukraine.
The Nordic nation is the 31st country to sign the treaty and become a member of the alliance.
The alliance’s pact states that any assault on one of its members constitutes an attack on all of the members.
It is a momentous occasion for Finland, which has maintained a policy of neutrality since the beginning of the cold war.
As Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the authorities in Helsinki came to the conclusion that their nation could no longer be secure on its own and, as a result, they submitted an application to become a member of the alliance a few months later.
The longest border that any European Union member state has is with Russia, which is shared by Finland and Norway. After Finland’s admission, the length of NATO’s border with Russia will almost double in size.
“Finland’s membership is not targeted against anyone. Nor does it change the foundations or objectives of Finland’s foreign and security policy,” Finnish Prime Minister Sauli Niinisto stated in a written statement on Tuesday.
His remarks came immediately after the country’s minister of foreign affairs, Pekka Haavisto, had handed up all of the admission paperwork in Brussels, at NATO’s headquarters, in the company of the group’s secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, and the United States State Secretary Antony Blinken.
Dmitry Peskov, a spokesperson for the Kremlin, stated on Tuesday that Russia would keep a careful eye on any future NATO deployments in Finland and that his nation would take counter-measures in response to Finland’s entrance into the alliance.
The historic move is widely seen as a setback to Russia, which is now in their second year of war with neighboring Ukraine.
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