Finland, Sweden launches NATO application in May, local media reports
Three NATO warships arrive in major port city to train Finnish fleet in mine-related exercises
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Finland and Sweden will jointly express their willingness to join NATO in May, the tabloid newspapers Iltalehti in Finland and Expressen in Sweden reported on Monday, citing sources close to the matter.
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Despite closer cooperation with the military alliance since Russia annexed Crimea, the two Nordic countries have both chosen to stay out, but Russia’s recent invasion of Ukraine has led to a sharp reversal in both countries’ attitudes towards NATO.
Finland and Sweden plan to have their national leaders meet the week of May 16 and after that publicly announce their plans to invite themselves to the alliance, Iltalehti wrote.
As in a queue, three NATO warships arrived at the southwestern Finnish port of Turku to train with the Finnish fleet, but the program had been going on for a year.
The Latvian miners LVNS Virsaitis and miners Estonian ENS Sakala and Dutch HNLMS Schiedam will train with two miners from the Finnish coastal fleet, the Finnish defense forces state in a statement. The Standing NATO Mine Countermeasures Group 1 is an immediate response force consisting of six ships.
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The exercise, scheduled for Thursday and Friday, will prepare Finnish ships to participate in NATO’s 2022 Response Forces and focus on “countermeasures and work in a multinational framework,” the statement said.
Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin said on April 13 that her country would make a decision within the next few weeks on whether to apply to join NATO, which led to an angry response from Russia.
Finland and neighboring Sweden are close partners with NATO but have withdrawn from joining the 30-member alliance founded in 1949 to counter the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Finland in particular has always cast a cautious eye to the east, as it shares a 1,300 km long border with Russia and has been seriously forced to defend it in the past.
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“We have been preparing our society and have been training for this situation since the Second World War,” Tytti Tuppurainen, Finland’s EU Minister, told. Economic times last month.
Marin said that the option of joining NATO must be carefully analyzed, but that everything has changed since Russian forces invaded Ukraine on February 24.
About 30 percent of the country’s adult population are reservists, which means that Finland can use one of the largest military in relation to its size – 5.5 million people – in Europe.
“We train regularly at many levels to make sure everyone knows what to do – the political decision-making, what the banks do, what the church does, what the industry does, what is the role of the media,” said Janne Kuusela, director general of defense policy at the Ministry of Defense. told FT. “The end result is that you can turn this society into a state of crisis if need be.”
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Even its industrial sectors such as telecom, food supply and energy meet every few months to discuss their specific issues.
Companies in Finland “get it”, says Kuusela. “Business leaders have served in the military. We have no business, we have no welfare, we have no growth, if our defense fails. That is well understood. “
We have no business, we have no welfare, we have no growth, if our defense fails
Janne Kuusela, Finnish Ministry of Defense
In its budget this year, the federal government sharply increased military spending, by 700 million euros (950 million dollars) for 2022 and the rest of its commitment of 2.2 billion euros spread over another three years.
told Minister of Defense Antti Kaikkonen YLE News the force would procure “anti-tank weapons, air defense weapons, infantry equipment, artillery parts, field hospital supplies and naval and air defense missiles. You could say that we get our stores in shape and maintain our defense. ”
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Both Kaikkonen and the head of the Armed Forces, Timo Kivinen, said that the expenditure would take place regardless of whether Finland joins NATO or not.
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Next month, Sgt. Sonja Airikki, a 39-year-old reservist, will teach civilian women shooting, cyber security and how to deal with the first days of an invasion from abroad.
“I would not call it fear,” Airikki added Los Angeles Times. “It’s more about being prepared.”
When registration for the reservist program began, its 400 seats were filled almost immediately and a waiting list of 500 names had to be established.
“The change has been enormous,” Ilpo Pohjola, a senior official at the Finnish Reservists’ Association, which has been involved since its inception almost 30 years ago, told the Times. “It’s something very special. I have not seen anything like it before.
“We have known for 100 years that there is evil on the other side of the border, but now I think people have woken up,” he said. “They understand that we must be prepared.”