Russia-NATO Border Doubles In Size After Finland Joins Alliance: Russia’s border with NATO countries doubled overnight after Finland became the 31st member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization – a security alliance that guarantees militaristic support in the event of an invasion.
The Finnish flag was raised outside of NATO’s new headquarters in Belgium in a ceremony. A military band played the Finnish national anthem as well as the NATO hymn.
The ceremony was attended by Finnish Foreign Minister Pekka Haavisto and other government figures from NATO countries, including U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
The announcement was widely praised by other NATO member states, including the United Kingdom. In a statement from the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office, NATO’s accession to the Alliance was described as “historic” and another step towards achieving NATO’s goal of promoting peace. The statement also called on Turkey and Hungary to provide a “clear path” for Sweden’s accession to NATO, too.
“The UK was one of the first NATO Allies to ratify Finland’s and Sweden’s bids to the Alliance and played a significant role in securing agreement from all NATO allies for Finland’s accession. We continue to urge Turkey and Hungary to provide a clear path for Sweden’s accession to the Alliance as swiftly as possible. Alongside the Foreign Ministers’ meeting, the Foreign Secretary will meet his Turkish and Hungarian counterparts, Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu and Péter Szijjártó, and impress this urgency,” the statement reads.
The news adds an additional 832 miles of border between Russia and NATO, and by NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg’s own admission, the accession of Finland means that Russia now has a powerful military force, backed by 30 other militaries, on its border.
“They have trained and built a large army over many years and maintain that high level of readiness. Finland is also a country with extremely high level of resilience, of preparedness throughout the whole society,” Stoltenberg said of Finland on Tuesday.
Putin Opposes NATO Eastward Expansion
Before Vladimir Putin announced the so-called “special military operation” in Ukraine in February 2022, the Russian president made it clear that his government opposed the eastward expansion of NATO and called on Western leaders to provide security guarantees to prevent an escalation in Ukraine or elsewhere in eastern Europe.
In December, 2021, Putin urged the West to meet Russia’s demands for security guarantees, telling reporters at an annual marathon news conference that there “must be no further expansion of NATO eastward.”
The West did not provide any such guarantee, and Putin went ahead with his special military operation – and while the invasion of Ukraine has not gone as the Kremlin likely expected, the news that Finland has now joined NATO despite a war in Ukraine could ultimately prove to be a turning point in the conflict. Putin may not have the conventional weapons and military gear to expand the scope of the conflict at this point.
Still, new agreements with China could give the Russian president new avenues to push back against perceived Western encroachment eastward.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has described Finland’s accession to NATO as a “violation” of Russian security and national interests.
Jack Buckby is 19FortyFive’s Breaking News Editor. He 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.
