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Post by Admin on May 16, 2022 21:55:53 GMT
Finland’s people want to join Nato despite Russia’s warnings 41,127 views May 17, 2022 If the Kremlin wanted to stop Nato expansion - that's also not exactly going according to plan.
Today, Sweden followed Finland to confirm it would apply to join the military alliance, both risking the wrath of Moscow.
Sweden has pursued a policy of neutrality for 200 years - while Helsinki's non-alignment is fueled by fears over the security of its long 830-mile border with Russia.
But now that frontier could soon belong to Nato - just 250 miles from St Petersburg.
In Moscow today, President Putin claimed that Russia had no problem with either country joining Nato, but he warned that the "expansion of military infrastructure into this territory would certainly provoke our response... we shall see what threats are created for us”. -----------------------
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Post by Admin on May 19, 2022 17:58:26 GMT
Turkey’s leader flatly opposes having Sweden and Finland join NATO but the military alliance’s top official said Thursday he was confident that the standoff would be resolved and that the two Nordic nations would join soon. Turkey’s approval of Finland and Sweden’s application to join the Western military alliance is crucial because NATO makes decisions by consensus. Each of its 30 member countries has the power to veto a membership bid. “We have told our relevant friends we would say ‘no’ to Finland and Sweden’s entry into NATO, and we will continue on our path like this,” President Recep Tayyip Erdogan told Turkish youths in a video for Commemoration of Atatürk, Youth and Sports Day, a national holiday. Meanwhile, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said Thursday he was ”confident that we will come to a quick decision to welcome both Sweden and Finland to join the NATO family.” “We are addressing the concerns that Turkey has expressed, because when an important ally (like) Turkey raises security concerns, raises issues, then of course the only way to deal with that is to sit down and find common ground,” Stoltenberg told reporters in Copenhagen, Denmark. Finland and Sweden officially applied to join the world’s biggest security organization on Wednesday. A first meeting of NATO ambassadors to discuss their applications failed to reach a consensus. For the moment, no new meeting of NATO ambassadors is planned, and one is only likely to be held once higher-level diplomacy with Turkish officials has addressed Erdogan’s concerns. Erdogan has said Turkey’s objection stems from its security concerns and grievances with Sweden’s — and to a lesser degree Finland’s — perceived support of the banned Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, and an armed group in Syria that Turkey sees as an extension of the PKK. Turkey’s conflict with the PKK has killed tens of thousands of people since 1984. A full recording of Erdogan’s conversation for the holiday that marks the beginning of the Turkish War of Independence in 1919 is expected to be released Thursday night. It was not immediately clear when the conversation took place. In the remarks made available earlier Thursday, Erdogan branded the two prospective NATO members and especially Sweden as “a focus of terror, home to terror.” He accused them of giving financial and weapons support to the armed groups, and claimed the countries’ alleged links to terror organizations meant they should not be part of the trans-Atlantic alliance.
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Post by Admin on May 21, 2022 14:23:41 GMT
Russia halts gas supplies to Finland - BBC News 21,107 views May 21, 2022 Russia has halted its gas supply to Finland - the latest escalation of an energy payments row with the West.
Russia's gas giant Gazprom confirmed it had completely halted exports to Finland at 04:00 GMT on Saturday.
Finland said all the deliveries had stopped, but added there would be no disruption to customers.
Helsinki has been refusing to pay for its supplies in roubles. But the cut-off also follows an announcement that Finland will apply for Nato membership.
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Post by Admin on May 31, 2022 18:32:39 GMT
Turkey’s foreign minister has said Finland and Sweden should change their laws if needed to win Ankara’s backing in their historic bid to join NATO following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, doubling down on a threat to veto an enlargement of the alliance. Mevlut Cavusoglu said on Tuesday that Turkey, a NATO member for seven decades, would not lift its opposition to the two Nordic countries’ ascension unless its demands were met, echoing recent comments by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Ankara has accused both countries of harbouring people linked to groups it deems to be “terrorists”, including the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), and has taken issue with their decisions to halt arms exports to Turkey in 2019. It has demanded they must halt their support for the PKK and other groups, bar them from organising any events on their territory, extradite those sought by Turkey on “terrorism” charges, support Turkey’s military and “counterterrorism” operations, and lift all arms exports restrictions. For their part, Finland and Sweden have sought to negotiate a solution and other NATO member states have said they remain confident that the objections raised by Turkey – which has the transatlantic alliance’s second-biggest military – can be overcome. All 30 NATO allies must unanimously approve any enlargement of the United States-led security body.
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Post by Admin on Jun 29, 2022 13:33:26 GMT
MADRID (AP) — NATO declared Russia the “most significant and direct threat” to its members’ peace and security, as the military alliance met Wednesday to confront what NATO’s chief called the biggest security crisis since World War II. It also promised to “step up political and practical support” to Ukraine as it fights off Russia’s invasion. But Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy chided NATO for not embracing his embattled country more fully and asked for more weapons to defeat Moscow’s forces. Russia’s invasion of its neighbor shattered Europe’s peace, drove NATO to pour troops and weapons into eastern Europe on a scale not seen since the Cold War, and was set to give the defense organization two new members in Sweden and Finland. “President (Vladimir) Putin’s war against Ukraine has shattered peace in Europe and has created the greatest security crisis in Europe since the Second World War,” said Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg. The alliance promised to more support for Ukraine, which has already received billions in military and civilian aid from NATO countries. But Zelenskyy lamented that NATO’s open-door policy to new members did not appear to apply to his country. “The open-door policy of NATO shouldn’t resemble the old turnstiles on Kyiv’s subway, which stay open but close when you approach them until you pay,” Zelenskyy said by video link to the leaders of the 30 NATO nations meeting in Madrid. “Hasn’t Ukraine paid enough?”
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