Finland has become the 31st member of NATO after its foreign minister, Pekka Haavisto, signed an accession document and handed it to the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, at a ceremony in Brussels, ending Helsinki’s decades of official military nonalignment.
The handover completes an accelerated application process launched last May, when Finland and neighbouring Sweden sought to join NATO after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The two Nordic neighbors had hoped to become members at the same time, but Hungary and Turkey have held up Sweden’s application.
Turkey became the last NATO member to ratify Finland’s application last week.
Ankara is accusing Sweden of sheltering Kurdish militants and Budapest angry about Swedish criticism of the rule of law in Hungary.
Finland’s accession falls on the 74th anniversary of the signing of Nato’s founding Washington Treaty on 4 April 1949.
Finland President Sauli Niinistö said it was a “great day for Finland” but also an important day for the security and the stability of the alliance.
The blue-and-white flag of Finland will shortly be raised alongside those of its partners outside Nato headquarters.
“President Putin had as a declared goal of the invasion of Ukraine to get less Nato,” the alliance’s secretary general, the former Norwegian prime minister Jens Stoltenberg, said shortly before the ceremony. “He is getting exactly the opposite.”
Stoltenberg added: “Finland today, and soon also Sweden will become a full-fledged member of the alliance.” Finland’s membership “removes the room for miscalculation in Moscow about Nato’s readiness to protect Finland”, he said.
Nato’s border with Russia will roughly double with the accession of Finland, which shares a 1,340km (832 mile) border with its eastern neighbour. Moscow has warned it will bolster its defences in the region if necessary.
The Kremlin spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, said on Tuesday that Nato’s expansion to embrace Finland was an “encroachment on our security and on Russia’s national interests”, adding that Moscow would watch closely for any Nato military deployments there.
Putin had previously said that Russia had no “territorial differences” with Finland or Sweden, so it was “up to them” whether they joined — but Russia would respond to any deployments of NATO military units or infrastructure to their territories.
Ifunanya Ikueze is an Engineer, Safety Professional, Writer, Investor, Entrepreneur and Educator.
