On Monday, Russia warned that Finland and Sweden’s decision to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization military alliance was a catastrophic mistake and that Moscow would respond.
Sergei Ryabkov, who is the deputy foreign minister, says that this is yet another big mistake that will have long-lasting effects.
According to local news organizations, the general level of military tensions will rise.
It’s a shame, he says, that common sense is being abandoned for some phantom ideas about how to handle the current crisis.
According to Ryabkov, the action would not improve the security of the two countries, and Moscow would take countermeasures.
They should not believe that Russia will just accept this, he said.
Finland and Sweden were going to end decades of not joining a military alliance in order to join NATO as a way to stop Russia from attacking.
Moscow had said that it would take “retaliatory steps” against Finland, which it shares an 800-mile border with.
On Saturday, Sauli Niinisto, the president of Finland, met with Vladimir Putin, the president of Russia, to talk about Finland’s application to join NATO.
According to the Kremlin, Putin considers any end to Finland’s military neutrality a “mistake.”
On the same day that Finland revealed its intention to join NATO, Sweden’s ruling party indicated its support for membership, clearing the way for a combined application.
In a similar spirit, Turkey made demands on the margins of a NATO foreign ministers conference in Berlin on Sunday, saying it wanted the two Nordic countries to stop supporting Kurdish militants on their soil and relax the restriction on some arms shipments to Turkey.
Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said his meetings in Berlin with Swedish and Finnish counterparts were fruitful.
Turkey will evaluate the ideas provided by the two nations in response to Ankara’s concerns.
NATO anticipates that Ankara’s worries about the Nordic nations’ membership bid will be addressed.
