As Finland becomes the Western alliance’s 31st member, the Finnish flag will be raised at the Nato offices in Brussels.
Sauli Niinisto, the president of Finland, and the secretary of state of the United States will attend a ceremony to officially enter NATO.
The addition of Finland is a setback for Russian President Vladimir Putin, who frequently bemoaned Nato’s growth prior to his full-scale assault of Ukraine.
Russia’s boundary with NATO members has now doubled in length.
In response to Russia’s conflict, Finland and Sweden officially applied to join NATO in May. Finland and Russia share an eastern border of 1,340 km (832 miles).
They had both earlier decided to follow a non-alignment policy. However, following the invasion of Ukraine, they decided to rely on NATO’s Article 5, which states that an assault on one member is an attack on all.
It effectively means that all Nato members, including the US, would defend Finland if it were to come under invasion or assault.
Following Russia’s incursion, support for Finland’s membership in NATO increased to 80%.
According to Nato Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, this will strengthen NATO and make Finland secure.
“President Putin had a declared goal of getting less Nato along its borders and no more membership in Europe, but he’s getting exactly the opposite,” said one observer.
While this was going on, Dmitry Peskov, a spokesperson for the Kremlin, issued a warning that Russia would be “watching closely” what transpired in Finland and denounced Nato’s enlargement as a “violation of our security and our national interests.”
The Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has accused Stockholm of welcoming Kurdish militants and permitting them to hold public demonstrations, which has put an end to Sweden’s application for the time being. Hungary still needs to accept Sweden’s membership.
Nato, according to Mr. Stoltenberg, will make sure that Sweden joins as a new member.
The accession process for Helsinki took less than a year, and the ceremony on Tuesday falls on the 74th anniversary of Nato’s establishment in 1949.
When Foreign Minister Pekka Haavisto presents US Secretary of State Antony Blinken with the accession documents, it will officially become a member.
The US ambassador to Nato, Julianne Smith, told the BBC that Finland is “a terrific ally, very capable, shares our values, and we expect a seamless transition into its proper seat at the table.”
At the upcoming NATO summit in Lithuania in July, she expressed the desire that Sweden would also join.
Despite claiming that Russia was being forced to take countermeasures to tactically and strategically guarantee its own security, the Kremlin emphasized that it had never had disagreements with Helsinki in the same way that Ukraine had turned “anti-Russian.”
The short-range Iskander-M ballistic missile system, which can deliver nuclear as well as conventional weapons, was turned over to Belarus by Russia, according to Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu on Tuesday. He claimed that some fighter aircraft from Belarus could also transport nuclear weapons.
According to Jens Stoltenberg, NATO has not yet noticed any modifications to Russia’s nuclear stance that would necessitate a change by the coalition. He continued by saying that without Helsinki’s approval, no NATO forces would be stationed in Finland.
Now that NATO will have seven allies on the Baltic Sea, Russia’s coastal access to St. Petersburg and its tiny outpost of Kaliningrad will be even more cut off.
Russia will be carefully monitoring how NATO uses Finnish territory, according to Dmitry Peskov, “in terms of basing weapons systems and infrastructure there that will be right up close to our borders, potentially threatening us,” according to the BBC.
The Kremlin spokesman stated that “measures will be taken based on that.”
