Finland becomes NATO member Tuesday

Finland will on Tuesday, April 4, 2023, become the 31st member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

The Western military alliance’s secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, made the declaration on Monday.

“We will raise the Finnish flag for the first time here at NATO headquarters. It will be a good day for Finland’s security, for Nordic security and for NATO as a whole.

“Sweden will also be safer as a result,” Stoltenberg said in Brussels.

The application was prompted by the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, with which Finland shares a long border.

Turkey had delayed the application, complaining that Finland was supporting “terrorists”.

Sweden applied to join NATO at the same time last May, but Turkey is blocking it over similar complaints.

Turkish President, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, had accused it of embracing Kurdish militants and allowing them to demonstrate on the streets of Stockholm.

Finland’s membership is one of the most important moments in NATO’s recent history.

Finland, a country with a 1,340km (832 mile) border with Russia and one of the most powerful arsenals of artillery pieces in Western Europe, decided to ditch its neutrality and join the alliance in response to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Sweden also abandoned a longstanding commitment to neutrality in applying to join NATO, but unlike its neighbour it does not share a border with Russia.

One of NATO’s founding principles is that of collective defence – meaning an attack on one member nation is treated as an attack on them all.

In response to Stoltenberg’s announcement, Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister, Alexander Grushko, said: “In the event that the forces and resources of other Nato members are deployed in Finland, we will take additional steps to reliably ensure Russia’s military security.”

Finland will become the seventh NATO country on the Baltic Sea, further isolating Russia’s coastal access at St Petersburg and on its small exclave of Kaliningrad.

Finnish public opinion has been radically altered by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Almost overnight last spring, support for NATO membership leapt from an underwhelming one-third of Finns to almost 80 per cent.

The Star

Segun Ojo