President of the Republic of Finland Sauli Niiniste. Archival photoMOSCOW, 12 Jun. Finnish President Sauli Niiniste has warned NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg not to join the alliance without Sweden, Norwegian TV channel NRK reported.
"I say the Swedish cause is our cause. This means that we will go forward hand in hand,» he said.
On Sunday, Stoltenberg visited the Finnish town of Kultaranta to discuss Finland's accession to the alliance. Helsinki and Stockholm started talking about the possibility of joining NATO against the backdrop of a Russian special operation on Ukraine and submitted an application for entry on May 18. Ankara blocked the process of its consideration. The President of the Republic, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, said that he had imposed a veto because of the position of the two countries towards the banned Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) in Turkey. Pushkov warned about the possibility of the appearance of NATO nuclear weapons in FinlandMoscow has repeatedly noted that the alliance is aimed at confrontation. As the press secretary of the Russian leader Dmitry Peskov stressed, further expansion of the bloc will not bring greater security to Europe. At the same time, he does not consider the entry of Sweden and Finland into this organization an existential threat to Russia. Vladimir Putin himself noted that abandoning the traditional policy of Helsinki's military neutrality would be erroneous, since there are no threats to Finland.
The US explained how NATO uses Sweden and Finland against Russia