Finnish President Sauli Niinistö and Prime Minister Sanna Marin issued a joint statement on the urgent entry into the North Atlantic Alliance.

Niistö and Marin stated that they wanted to give the people of the country the opportunity to discuss this topic in more detail and widely, but the time has come to make a decision.

“NATO membership will strengthen Finland’s security,” the two leaders said in a statement. “As a member of NATO, Finland will strengthen the entire defense alliance. Finland should apply for NATO membership without delay.”

“We cannot remain defenseless against a Russia that does not comply with international laws,” Prime Minister Sanna Marin said earlier in an interview with Japanese media.

Sweden is expected to take similar steps soon.

Until now, both states have adhered to a policy of neutrality, but the aggression unleashed by Russia against Ukraine in February has tangibly affected public sentiment in both countries.

The Kremlin has already stated that Finland’s accession to the alliance is seen as a threat to Russia.

The decision to apply for NATO membership must be made by the Finnish Parliament. Apparently, he will do it, because, unlike in previous years, the majority of the country’s population supports joining the North Atlantic Alliance.

Opinion polls show that 76% of the population in Finland are now in favor of this decision, and only 12% are against it. This is a huge shift in the public opinion of the country, where usually about half of the population opposed joining the alliance. Finnish legislators simply cannot ignore public opinion so clearly expressed.

Leading Finnish politicians also seem to support the country’s entry into NATO.

Finland is expected to officially announce this decision on Sunday.

The same decision on Sunday is expected in Sweden.

Each of these two countries decides on its own to join NATO, but Stockholm and Helsinki are working closely on this issue.

The NATO leadership has already stated that the applications of Finland and Sweden will be considered very quickly.

“Finland is one of NATO’s closest partners, a mature democracy, a member of the European Union, making an important contribution to Euro-Atlantic security,” NATO Secretary General Stoltenberg said.

Applications will first be considered by the NATO Council, and officially the admission of the two countries to the alliance may be announced in the summer at the next NATO summit.

However, the final admission to this organization will be formalized within a year, when the necessary documents will be ratified by the parliaments of all the current 30 NATO countries.

Frank Gardner

BBC security correspondent from Estonia

Putin warned Finland against joining NATO, but that didn’t seem to work. His attack on Ukraine provoked exactly the reaction he fears most: NATO’s further expansion to Russia’s borders.

How will he react?

On the eve of the invasion of Ukraine, President Putin spoke of the unacceptability of moving NATO’s borders towards Russia, calling it a direct threat to the country’s security.

Finland’s accession to NATO increases the length of the border with the alliance by 1,340 km, and the distance from NATO’s borders to St. Petersburg is reduced to 150 km.

Commenting on the statement of the Prime Minister and the President of Finland, the press secretary of the President of the Russian Federation Dmitry Peskov said that the entry of this country into NATO would threaten Russia.

According to him, Russia will conduct a special analysis after Finland joins NATO in order to develop the necessary measures to ensure its security.

“Everything will depend on how the [NATO] expansion process will be expressed in the future, how far the military infrastructure will move, get closer to our borders,” he said.

Russia has more than once expressed dissatisfaction with statements by politicians from neutral Sweden and Finland about the need to join NATO in order to ensure the security of this region.

“Helsinki should be aware of the responsibility and consequences of such a step. Finland’s accession to NATO will cause serious damage to bilateral Russian-Finnish relations, maintaining stability and security in the Northern European region. Russia will be forced to take retaliatory steps, both military-technical and other. in order to stop the threats to its national security arising in this regard,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement published on May 12 on the ministry’s website.

Back in January, Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the two countries were being used as an instrument of confrontation.

“Any expansion of NATO worries Russia. NATO is not an institution for development. NATO is an instrument of confrontation. The alliance is conceived this way, it is designed this way, it exists this way. This is an absolute obvious fact. The expansion poses a threat to us,” the Kremlin spokesman said at the time.

Later, Russia said that if the two northern countries join NATO, it would take countermeasures of a military-technical nature, but did not specify which ones.

In practice, this may mean strengthening the Russian military contingent in Karelia and, in particular, in the areas bordering Finland. In addition, Russia may abandon the non-nuclear status of the Baltic.

Finnish diplomat and fellow at the Center for a New American Security in Washington, Heli Hautala, told The Associated Press in an interview that Finland also fears Russian disinformation campaigns, cyberattacks, economic retaliation, and even migration flows across the Russian-Finnish border, following the example of what happened in the past. took place on the border of Poland and Belarus.