RTL Today – “Historically” increased support: Ukraine’s war for Sweden, Finland even closer to NATO
The Russian invasion of Ukraine has raised the status quo in traditionally non-aligned Finland and Sweden, which has ushered in a “historic” increase in support for NATO, “exceptional” arms exports and despite Moscow’s demands.
Stockholm and Helsinki have ruled out applying to join NATO’s military alliance for the time being, but the two countries have never been so close to taking the step, say analysts.
“Everything is possible at the moment and the signal from the NATO countries is that a membership application can be processed in a very short time,” says Zebulon Carlander, defense analyst at the Civil and Defense Organization in Sweden.
“So I think it’s very much a political decision that rests in the capitals – Stockholm and Helsinki,” he told AFP.
The two countries are officially non-aligned, although they have been NATO partners since the mid-1990s and ended their neutral stance at the end of the Cold War.
Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin said on Tuesday that the mindset of citizens and politicians to join the alliance is “changing” after Russia’s attack on Ukraine.
The NATO debate “is in full swing and will certainly intensify,” Marin said, after meeting with party leaders to consider how to respond to a public petition calling for a referendum on NATO membership.
But Marin warned against drawing conclusions at this stage.
The call gathered the 50,000 signatures needed to refer the matter to parliament in less than a week, and will be seen as part of a broader debate on the Ukraine crisis.
For the first time, a majority (53 percent) of Finns are in favor of joining NATO, according to a survey published by Yle on Monday.
That is almost twice as many a month ago, when the newspaper Helsingin Sanomat set the support at only 28 percent.
“(This is) a completely historic and exceptional result,” Charly Salonius-Pasternak of the Finnish International Institute told AFP.
Support for joining NATO is historically high in Sweden as well – 41 percent according to a survey from SVT on Friday.
Russian warnings
In another radical change, the two countries have broken with tradition by exporting arms to a country in active conflict.
Sweden sends 5,000 anti-tank weapons to Ukraine together with helmets and body armor, while Finland sends 2,500 automatic rifles, ammunition and 1,500 single-use anti-tank weapons.
For Sweden, this has never been seen before since the Winter War of 1939, when it sent aid to Finland to counter an invasion of no less than the Soviet Union.
“This is probably just the beginning of reassessments of Swedish defense security policy,” said Carlander.
Both countries are also seeing an increase in applications for their army reserves.
Experts expect the two countries to act in agreement on whether to join NATO.
If they did, it would further increase tensions between Russia and the West, as the alliance’s expansion to the east is the Kremlin’s main security problem.
On Friday, Russia’s foreign ministry warned that if the Nordic countries joined NATO, it would “have serious military and political repercussions”.
Helsinki shrugged as a warning they had heard before.