Sweden and Finland agree to submit NATO applications | NATO
Sweden and Finland have agreed to submit simultaneous membership applications to the US-led NATO alliance as early as the middle of next month, Nordic media have reported.
The Finnish newspaper said Iltalehti on Monday that Stockholm had “proposed the two countries to state their willingness to join” on the same day, and that Helsinki had agreed to “as long as the Swedish government has made its decision”.
The It quoted Expressen government sources confirming the report. The two countries’ prime ministers said this month that they were considering the issue, claiming that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine had changed Europe’s “entire security landscape” and “dramatically shaped thinking” in the Nordic region.
The Prime Minister of Finland, Sanna Marin, then said that her country, which shares a 1,300 km (810 km) border with Russia, would decide whether to apply to join the alliance “fairly quickly, in weeks not months”, despite the risk. to get upset. Moscow.
Her Swedish counterpart, Magdalena Andersson, said that Sweden must be “prepared for all kinds of actions from Russia” and that “everything had changed” when Moscow attacked Ukraine. Russia has repeatedly warned both countries of the move.
The Kremlin said it would be forced to “restore military balance” by strengthening its defense in the Baltic Sea, including by deploying nuclear weapons, if the two countries decide to abandon decades of military alliance freedom by joining NATO.
Sweden’s Foreign Minister Ann Linde said last week that a comprehensive security review would be completed on 13 rather than 31 May as originally planned, adding that with Finland’s analysis already published “there is now a lot of pressure”.
Expressen said that the simultaneous applications could be submitted during the week of May 16, at the same time as the Finnish president Sauli Niinistö had a state visit to Stockholm. The Guardian could not independently confirm the information.
The latest opinion polls have shown that as many as 68% of Finns are in favor of joining the alliance, more than twice as many as before the invasion, with only 12% against. Surveys in Sweden indicate that a small majority of Swedes also back membership.
Both countries are officially non-aligned militarily, but became NATO partners – participated in exercises and exchanged intelligence – after abandoning their previously strict neutrality when they joined the EU in 1995 after the end of the Cold War.