Finland’s Europe minister says ‘highly likely’ Finland will join NATO
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Tytti Tuppurainen is Finland’s minister for European affairs, in an interview on Sky News in the UK about Finland’s prospect for joining Nato, said it is ‘highly likely’ Finland will join Nato.
Speaking from Helsinki, she said there was now a profound change in the relations between Russia and Finland, which saddens her. She told viewers:
Tytti Tuppurainen said that the “people of Finland have already made up their mind” and that polls show huge support for membership of the alliance.
“At this point I would say it is highly, but a decision has not yet been made,” she said.
She said Russia’s “brutal” war in Ukraine is a “wake up call to us all”.
Questioned on how quickly Finland could achieve Nato membership, she said “the interim period between the membership application and becoming an actual member can become really nasty. So I think it’s in the best interest of us all that the application process is as quick as possible.”
On the prospect of future Russian expansion westwards, she said:
“We’ve seen what Russia is able to do, what Vladimir Putin is able to do. He’s a ruthless dictator, and he wants to peal back the years of the former Soviet Russia, and we cannot allow that to happen. So we have to do what we need to do, as Western countries, as defenders of liberal values and liberal democracy, and we have to act united, and we have to isolate Russia.”
Moscow responded by threatening it would be the end of a nuclear-free Baltic region.
Threatening nuclear escalation, the deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, Dmitry Medvedev said: “There can be no more talk of any nuclear-free status for the Baltic – the balance must be restored.”
He also vowed to “seriously strengthen the grouping of ground forces and air defence (and) deploy significant naval forces in the Gulf of Finland”.
