Russia on standby as NATO chief “absolutely convinced” that Sweden and Finland will join in 2023 | The world | News
NATO expansion in the Baltics looks set to take place in the new year, posing a national security headache for Vladimir Putin. Sweden and Finland abandoned their long-standing policy of military non-alignment this year and decided to apply to join NATO after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
General Jens Stoltenberg is said to have said that Sweden and Finland are expected to officially join NATO in the coming year.
The move requires unanimous approval by the alliance’s current 30 members.
Turkey has held up the process while pressuring the two Nordic countries to crack down on groups it considers terrorist organizations and to extradite people suspected of terror-related crimes.
The parliaments of 28 NATO countries have already ratified Sweden’s and Finland’s membership. Turkey and Hungary are the only members that have not yet given their approval.
It comes as Putin said in a state television interview, excerpts of which were released Sunday afternoon, that Russia is “ready to negotiate some acceptable results with all participants in this process.”
He said “it’s not us who’s refusing talks, it’s them” – something the Kremlin has repeatedly said in recent months as its 10-month-old invasion was winding down.
Putin also reiterated that Moscow “has no other choice” and said he believed the Kremlin was “acting in the right direction”.
He said: “We are defending our national interests, the interests of our citizens, our people.”
Putin’s statements come as attacks on Ukraine continue. A nationwide air strike alert was announced twice on Sunday alone, and three missiles in the afternoon hit the city of Kramatorsk in the partially occupied Donetsk region, local officials reported.
The missiles hit an industrial area in the city, and there were no casualties, according to the Ukrainian governor of Donetsk, Pavlo Kyrylenko.
Kyrylenko said the town of Avdiivka was also attacked on Sunday with six shellings and a woman was wounded there.
Elsewhere in the frontline region, around the town of Bakhmut, where fierce fighting has raged in recent weeks, Russian forces were struggling to maintain the pace of their offensive, a US-based think tank reported at the weekend.
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“The speed of Russian forces’ advance in the Bakhmut area has likely slowed in recent days, although it is too early to judge whether the Russian offensive to capture Bakhmut has culminated,” the Institute for the Study of War wrote in its latest update.
The think tank cited Russian military bloggers, who it said have recently acknowledged “that Ukrainian forces in the Bakhmut area have succeeded in slowing the pace of the Russian advance around Bakhmut and its surrounding settlements.”
Sources on Ukrainian social media “previously claimed that Ukrainian forces completely pushed Russian forces out of the eastern outskirts of Bakhmut” around December 21, the report added.
“Russian forces are likely to struggle to maintain the tempo of their offensive operations in the Bakhmut area and may attempt to initiate a tactical or operational pause,” the institute concluded.