Moscow- Russia has said that it will be forced to take “retaliatory steps” over its neighbour Finland’s move to join NATO. A foreign ministry statement said that the move would seriously damage bilateral relations and security in Northern Europe.
The Russian statement has described Finland’s move as “ a radical change in the country’s foreign policy. Moscow has asserted that “Finland’s accession to NATO will cause serious damage to the bilateral Russia-Finnish relations and maintain stability in the Northern European region.” Moscow also said that “Russia will be forced to take retaliatory steps, both of a military-technical and other nature, to neutralize the threats to its national security.”
Russia’s deputy UN representative Dmitry Polyansky said that Sweden and Finland would become the next possible targets for Russia if they became NATO members.
Finland shares a 1,300km border with Russia. Until now, it stayed out of NATO to avoid the drastic steps taken by Russia, but since Russia invaded Ukraine, there has been a huge surge in public support to join NATO “without any delay.”
Finland will formally announce its decision on Sunday after they will discuss the NATO membership in the parliament and other senior political figures. While the NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg has said that he expects the process of giving Sweden and Finland membership to happen “quite quickly.” And the White House said that the US would back NATO application for both the countries.