RZESZOW, Poland — Russian President Vladimir Putin’s attempt to overthrow the Ukrainian government has spurred Finland into the fast lane to join NATO in defiance of Russian threats and Kremlin pressure to force a practical contraction of the trans-Atlantic alliance.
“Finland — with a quite great, big probability — will give [an] application for NATO, and then Sweden can follow,” a senior European diplomat told the Washington Examiner. “Finland is ahead. Sweden is not — their discussions are a little bit lagging behind.”
Finland’s application reportedly could come as soon as early May in what would amount to a sprint into NATO from a country that shares an 800-mile border with Russia. That dialogue reflects a sea change in Finnish public opinion in the weeks since Putin ordered more than 150,000 Russian troops into Ukraine.
“The message from NATO and from me is that it is for Finland to decide,” NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg told CNBC on Friday. “We will respect the decision regardless of what the conclusion will be, but if Finland decides to apply for membership, I am confident that NATO allies will warmly welcome them — and we can quite quickly make the decision to have them as a member of the allies.”
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Finland’s accession into the alliance would represent a setback for Moscow, which unveiled a so-called draft treaty in December that would have required NATO to promise never to admit any additional members, and to downgrade military links between the original members of the alliance and the central and Eastern European states that joined after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
“In this new situation and changed security environment, also we’ll have to evaluate all means to guarantee the safety of Finland and Finns,“ Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin said last week. “We’ll have to seriously mull over our own stance and approach to military alignment. We’ll have to do this carefully but quickly, effectively during the course of this spring.”
A prominent Russian diplomat pledged “serious military and political repercussions” in retaliation for an application, a threat aired one day after the launch of the offensive in Ukraine, but NATO officials are preparing to guard against any Russian effort to target the Nordic states before their membership is ratified.
“We know that they can easily join this alliance if they decide to apply,” Stoltenberg told reporters earlier this week. “Then in the interim period, I’m certain that we will find ways to address concerns they may have regarding the period between the potential application and the final ratification.”
Finland fought off a Soviet invasion in 1939 and remained neutral during the Cold War. The memory of that conflict inspired the Finnish people, a nation of 5.5 million, to develop a sophisticated strategy of “comprehensive security” ranging from stockpiles of fuel and medicine to a military with 900,000 reservists prepared to fend off any future Russian invasion.
“We train on many levels regularly to make sure everybody knows what to do — the political decision-making, what do the banks do, the church does, industry does, what is media’s role,” Finnish Defense Ministry Director General Janne Kuusela told the Financial Times last month. “The end result is you can turn this society into crisis mode if needs be.”
Public support for joining NATO has soared in recent weeks, as the Russian invasion of Ukraine offered a vivid demonstration of Putin’s imperial ambitions — a warning that Zelensky delivered directly to the Finnish Parliament in a Friday address.
“I’m sure you realize that if the Russian army is ordered to invade your land, they will do the same to your country … to the cities of any country that the leadership of the Russian Federation decides is allegedly part of their empire, not the land of another nation,” Zelensky told the Eduskunta, as the Finnish legislature is known. “You have already seen in your history the cruelty and absurdity of the invasion of Russia. Let’s be honest: The threat remains. Everything must be done to prevent this from happening again.”
Putin has claimed that the “special military operation,” as he dubbed the war, was necessary to prevent Ukraine from joining NATO and starting a nuclear war with Russia. NATO allies have no appetite for a direct conflict with Russia as shown by their refusal to intervene on behalf of Ukraine. The alliance agreed in 2008 that Ukraine, eventually, would be permitted to join, but Ukraine’s bid has been stalled ever since — meaning that Finland’s entry will create something of “a big, awkward moment” for NATO, as the senior European official put it.
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“The state which wanted [NATO membership] desperately and didn’t get it and now [is] fighting to survive, to have this chance maybe in the future — somewhere far [in the] future — is not getting it,” the senior European official said. “The ones who are fighting and who have deserved it are not getting it.”
