BRUSSELS (AFP) – Finland became the 31st member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) yesterday, in a historic shift that drew an angry warning of “countermeasures” from the Kremlin.
The all-out invasion of Ukraine last year upended Europe’s security landscape and prompted Finland and its neighbour Sweden to drop decades of military non-alignment.
“Not so many years ago we thought it was unthinkable that Finland would become a member. Now they will be a fully-fledged member of our alliance and that is truly historic,” NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said. “We are removing the room for miscalculation in Moscow about NATO’s readiness to protect Finland, and that makes Finland safer.”
Finnish Defence Minister Antti Kaikkonen called it “a win-win situation” ahead of the choreographed final formalities before Finland’s blue-and-white flag can be hoisted in front of NATO’s headquarters.
But Moscow decried the move as an “assault” on Russia’s security and national interests.
“This forces us to take countermeasures… in tactical and strategic terms,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said. Joining NATO places Finland under the alliance’s Article Five, the collective defence pledge that an attack on one member “shall be considered an attack against them all”. This was the guarantee Finnish leaders decided they needed as they watched Russian President Vladimir Putin’s devastating assault on Ukraine.
“I’m tempted to say this is maybe the one thing we can thank Putin for, because he once again here has precipitated something he claims to want to prevent by Russia’s aggression,” United States Secretary of State Antony Blinken said. Invaded by its giant neighbour, the Soviet Union, in 1939, Finland which has a 1,300-kilometre border with Russia stayed out of NATO throughout the Cold War. Now its membership brings a potent military into the alliance with a wartime strength of 280,000 and one of Europe’s largest artillery arsenals.
Its strategic location bolsters NATO’s defences on a border running from the vulnerable Baltic states to the increasingly competitive Arctic.
Senior NATO military commander Admiral Rob Bauer told AFP that Finland had so far not requested its new allies station troops on its soil.
