NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg announced that Finland and Sweden have officially asked to join the world’s largest military alliance. This is because of security concerns about Russia’s war in Ukraine.
“I’m very happy that Finland and Sweden want to join NATO. “You are our closest partners,” Stoltenberg told reporters Wednesday after the ambassadors of the two Nordic countries gave him their letters of application.
“We must take advantage of this historic moment,” Stoltenberg said at the NATO headquarters in Brussels.
The two countries were neutral during the Cold War, so their decision to join the alliance is one of the biggest changes to Europe’s security in decades.
The 30 member countries must now decide what to do with the applications. This should take about two weeks, but Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said he doesn’t like the idea of Finland and Sweden joining.
If his concerns are taken care of and joining goes as planned, the two countries could join in a few months. Most of the time, the process takes between eight and twelve months, but NATO wants to move quickly because Russia is a threat to the Nordic countries.
Several NATO allies, including the UK, have given Finland and Sweden security guarantees during the time they are applying to join the alliance’s mutual defense pact.
“In the past few days, Finland and Sweden’s allies have said many times that they will protect their safety. NATO is already careful in the Baltic Sea area, and Stoltenberg said that NATO and its allies will continue to change as needed.
Stoltenberg also said that NATO allies are “determined to work through all problems and reach quick solutions.”
“All of our allies agree that expanding NATO is important. “Everyone agrees that we need to stick together,” he said.
Since Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, public opinion in Finland and Sweden has changed a lot in favor of joining the EU.
Russia’s Reaction
But the historic plans of the two countries to join NATO have hit a snag since Erdogan took a hard stance against the expansion of the Nordic countries.
Erdogan said on Monday that Swedish and Finnish delegations “should not bother” to go to Ankara after Stockholm said the two countries would send officials to try to change Turkey’s position.
Ankara says that Sweden and, to a lesser extent, Finland back groups that the Turkish government calls “terrorists.” Since Turkey did an operation across the border into Syria in 2019, Sweden has also put arms sanctions on Turkey.
The decision to join NATO is a setback for Moscow because the war in Ukraine led to the exact kind of expansion of the alliance on Russia’s borders that Moscow went to war to stop.
So far, Moscow’s response has been surprisingly quiet. It had previously warned of “military-technical” steps and said that if the countries joined, it could put nuclear weapons in its European outpost of Kaliningrad.
President Vladimir Putin said on Monday that Sweden and Finland joining NATO is not a threat to Russia, but he warned that Moscow would react if the Western alliance built up military infrastructure in the new Nordic members.
