Russia sees Sweden and Finland’s plans to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) as a destabilizing move, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said on Wednesday after the two talks. Nordic countries move forward to quickly join the military alliance.
“We consider the expansion of the North Atlantic alliance to be a purely destabilizing factor in international affairs. It does not add security either to those who are expanding it, or to those joining it, or to other countries that perceive the alliance as a threat,” Ryabkov said, according to the Interfax news agency.
Finland and Sweden announced their requests to join NATO in May, citing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as a reason for abandoning decades of foreign policy neutrality.
Avoiding the expansion of NATO to Russia’s borders was precisely the reason given by Russian President Vladimir Putin in launching the invasion, which he calls a “special military operation”, of Moscow in Ukraine on February 24.
But Russia has been sending mixed signals about the risks to its security due to Finland and Sweden joining the alliance.
In May, Putin said: “As for expansion, Russia has no problem with these states — none. And so, in that sense, there is no immediate threat to Russia from an expansion (of NATO) to include these countries.”
Turkey, which is part of NATO, initially threatened to block Finland and Sweden from joining, citing what it called Sweden’s support for Kurdish militants and its ban on exports of some types of weapons to Turkey.
However, Turkey dropped its objections to the two countries’ NATO bids on Tuesday as the alliance kicked off a three-day summit in Madrid.
Source: CNN Brasil
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