RUSSIA WARNS NATO OVER SWEDEN AND FINLAND MEMBERSHIP

Thu 14 April 2022:

Russia has warned NATO that, if Sweden and Finland join the military alliance, it will have to bolster its defences and there could be no more talk of a “nuclear free” Baltic.

“There can be no more talk of any nuclear–free status for the Baltic – the balance must be restored,” Dmitry Medvedev, deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, said.

“Until today, Russia has not taken such measures and was not going to,” he added.

The former president Dmitry Medvedev, the deputy chair of Russia’s security council, said on Thursday that Russia would bolster all its forces – including deploying nuclear weapons – in the region if the two Nordic countries joined the US-led alliance.

Finland and Sweden are deliberating whether to abandon decades of military non-alignment and join Nato, with the two Nordic countries’ leaders saying Russia’s onslaught on Ukraine had changed Europe’s “whole security landscape”.

Their accession to the alliance would more than double Russia’s land border with Nato members, Medvedev said. “Naturally, we will have to reinforce these borders” by bolstering ground, air and naval defences in the region, he said.

Medvedev, a close ally of President Vladimir Putin, explicitly raised the nuclear threat, saying Finnish and Swedish Nato membership would mean there could be “no more talk of any nuclear-free status for the Baltic: the balance must be restored”.

Russia had “not taken such measures, and was not going to”, he said. “But if our hand is forced, well … take note it wasn’t us who proposed this.” Russia borders the Baltic states of Estonia and Latvia, and the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad is sandwiched between Poland and Lithuania.

Finland’s prime minister, Sanna Marin, said on Wednesday that Finland, which shares a 1,300km (810-mile) border with Russia, was likely to decide on a Nato application “within weeks”, while her Swedish counterpart, Magdalena Andersson, said there was “no point delaying” the decision.

SOURCE: INDEPENDENT PRESS AND NEWS AGENCIES

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