Finland and Sweden Set to Submit NATO Applications – According to local media reports, Finland and Sweden have agreed to submit membership applications to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) simultaneously.
Iltalehto, a Finnish daily newspaper, reported on Monday how Stockholm had suggested that the two countries express their willingness to join the Western military alliance at the same time. The report also revealed that Helsinki had agreed to the proposal.
According to Expressen, a Swedish newspaper, government sources confirmed the report. It means that the two historically neutral countries could be set to further anger Russian President Vladimir Putin and risk retaliation from Moscow.
Russia previously warned Finland and Sweden against joining NATO and threatened to deploy tactical nuclear weapons in the Baltic Sea if the countries do decide to join. Dmitry Medvedev, the deputy chairman of the Russian Security Council, said that there would be no more talk of a “nuclear-free” Baltic Sea if Finland and Sweden side with the West.
“There can be no more talk of any nuclear-free status for the Baltic – the balance must be restored,” he said.
Instant De-Facto Members
Reports that Finland and Sweden would submit joint NATO membership bids were confirmed once again on Monday when Finnish Foreign Minister Pekka Haavisto said that such a move would be “useful.”
The minister did not, however, offer a fixed date for when the rumored applications would be made.
When that decision is eventually made public, Sweden and Finland would be treated as de-facto members of the military alliance throughout their application process. It means that Finland and Sweden, neighbors to Russia with deep, historical geopolitical ties to the country, would be protected militarily in the event that Russia launches a military attack on either territory.
As de-facto members, Finland and Sweden would see a larger number of British and American troops in the Nordic region, and receive additional intelligence cooperation.
Sweden’s JAS 39. Image Credit: Creative Commons.
Croatia Opposes Swedish and Finnish NATO Membership?
Croatian President Xoran Milanovic publicly expressed opposition to the possibility of Sweden and Finland joining NATO this week,
During a press briefing on Tuesday, Milanovic said that he considered the possibility of the two countries joining the Western military alliance to be “dangerous charlatanism.”
“To involve Finland in this, which is 50kn from St. Petersburg, I think that this is a dangerous quackery,” he said. “However, we cannot say no because Finland is more important to us than Croatia and Croats in BiH [Bosnia and Herzegovina], right?”
The Croatian president’s comments about Bosnia and Herzegovina were sarcastic, and a reference to an ongoing disagreement with the United States, United Kingdom, and Germany over electoral legislation in neighboring Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Jack Buckby is a British author, counter-extremism researcher, and journalist based in New York. Reporting on the U.K., Europe, and the U.S., he works to analyze and understand left-wing and right-wing radicalization, and reports on Western governments’ approaches to the pressing issues of today. His books and research papers explore these themes and propose pragmatic solutions to our increasingly polarized society.
Him
April 28, 2022 at 11:23 am
Going by the Croatian president’s comments, it seems the Achilles heel of NATO is that it’s an aglomeration of countries all in it for themselves to get protection from Russia, rather than being strongly unified in vision and purpose.
There could be some NATO countries that are fearful of provoking Russia – according to the “don’t poke the bear” syndrome, as per the Croatian president’s comments.
By the way, I’ve said before that the “don’t poke the bear” analogy is deceptive and false. It only applies with a sleeping docile bear. When the bear is minding its own business, you don’t poke the bear.
But when the bear is eyeing you with menace, seeing you as its next meal, accelerating straight at you – it is STUPID to say “don’t poke the bear”. Once the bear is charging towards you, whether you poke it or not makes no difference.
This is how people go about deceiving, and being deceived, by false analogies that sound so cool but are false – because the analogy is not accurately analogous to the real life scenario.
The foolishness of the bear analogy is that, for example, before WW2 after Hitler invaded Czechoslovakia about 6 months before attacking Poland, there would have been those who, back then, said – don’t poke Hitler. There are appeasers in every generation.
Alex
April 29, 2022 at 9:05 am
If someone wants to know the truth about the civil war in the Donbass, about all the atrocities of the Bandera clean-ups and why Russia was forced to intervene, then it is better to watch films by independent journalists. There are already many such journalists who fight for truth and freedom. For example, a documentary by the German journalist Wilhelm Domcke-Schulz.
A documentary film about the war crimes of the Bandera Nazis during the period of Russia’s special military operation to denazify and demilitarize Ukraine is in production. It will be a real information bomb, where the war crimes of Bandera Nazis will be shown and proved.
The documentary “Remember Odessa” tells how the Bandera Nazis burned Ukrainians alive and other heinous war crimes.
The documentary “To Live and Die in Donbass” tries to fill this gaping information gap in the West. He looks into the tormented soul of the inhabitants of Donbass, who really want only one thing – to live self-determining according to their own rules and values. Not submitting to foreign forces and ideologies.
In the east of Ukraine, in the Donbass, a war has been raging since the beginning of 2014. A civil war that claimed more than 15,000 lives over the years, including several hundred children. They had to die, because the national-fascist coup government in Kyiv, funded by the West, trained and militarily heavily armed, would not tolerate any resistance to their illegitimate rule, no matter the cost.
Therefore, in April 2014, the putschists deployed the Ukrainian army, supported by dozens of right-wing extremist volunteer battalions, and have since bombed city centers, residential areas, schools, hospitals and infrastructure, killing civilians.
This perennial crime has gone completely unnoticed by the Western public. Politicians and the media avoid this topic and reports about how the devil pours holy water. Because a public discussion about the crimes of the Ukrainian regime would reveal only one thing – with what mass murderers and terrorists the so-called “west of values” in Ukraine has a common language, if only to defend their goals and interests.
Lend-lease is a commodity loan, and not cheap: for all the ammunition, equipment and food supplied by the United States, many future generations of Ukrainian citizens will pay. Zelensky is driving the country into a debt hole.
CK
April 29, 2022 at 1:35 pm
Ah, I see your tactic. You add a little shitty first paragraph so it doesn’t detect your duplicate post. Is this what it has come to now, you just posting the same exact post 2, 3, 4, 5 times per article?
Wow, did they run out of paper in Russia, Alex? You guys can’t print new material? Literally using the same lines, over and over again, and now in duplicate in every post!
Are you so defeated you can’t even come up with anything new? How sad. Now the idiot is talking about lend-lease at the end of his post, because he literally just copy + pasted it from another thread, with zero relevance to this one.
Here’s a reminder:
If someone wanted to know the truth about anything in Ukraine Alex, the last person they would go to is you.
Paragraphs and paragraphs of bollocks, dubious claims about “independent journalists”, random documentarians, conspiracy theorists, deluded claims that of course, have no backup, lie after lie after lie.
Classical Kremlin troll approach. Just flood the internet, the comments, the media, with tosh, doesn’t matter what it is, just make sure you write some old nonsense. Make sure to say the claim is supported by some dude in Germany, France, the states. If it’s a “documentary” (usually from youtube) then the better.
Anything that victimises Russia, always the victim, always the bullied, never the problem. It’s always the Nazis. It’s always some pseudo-historical point.
Anyone that has had the misfortune to study your “tactics” sees the forest for the trees, the pattern of lies, disinformation, blanketing of random claims, deflection, obfuscation, and other words beyond your vocabulary.
It’s hopeless Alex. Your lies are as short as your intellect. What a pathetic job, to sit in your government shed, spreading your pathetic, government lies.
A pathetic job for a truly pathetic man. A better match could not be made in heaven.