“We don’t want to rush here. Why should we?” he said. “We will calmly reveal what we will do in response when the time is right.”
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov. Photo: TASS
Meanwhile, Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Grushko told TASS on Tuesday that Russia will take military -technical measures if NATO increases its activities after Finland joins the military alliance.
"From a legal point of view, NATO approaches the 1,300-kilometer border between Russia and Finland. This is a military -political reality that must be taken into account in our defense planning and this is what we will do. If NATO's activity increases in the region, all necessary military-technical precautions will be taken," the senior Russian diplomat said.
Russia will “closely monitor” how Finland’s NATO membership will affect the deployment of forces in the Nordic region, including “the possibility of deploying foreign forces on the territory of that country,” Grushko added.
Finland and Sweden applied to join NATO on May 18, 2022, but Türkiye blocked their efforts to join the US-led alliance, demanding that the two Nordic countries declare Kurdish organizations as terrorist groups and extradite them to Türkiye.
After a period of negotiations, the Turkish parliament passed a bill ratifying the NATO membership protocol for Finland on March 30, while Sweden is still waiting.
Finland was officially admitted to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization as its 31st member yesterday (April 4) in a ceremony at NATO headquarters in Brussels, Belgium.
"For nearly 75 years, this great alliance has protected our nations and continues to do so today," NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said at the ceremony. Finnish President Saul Niinisto said Finland's most important contribution to NATO's collective deterrence and defense would be to defend its own territory.
However, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov said that security in Northern Europe would decline rather than increase after Finland joined NATO. “The security of these Nordic countries will not increase, but on the contrary, decrease as a result of Finland joining NATO,” he said.
The deputy chairman of the Russian Federation Council, Konstantin Kosachev, also wrote on his Telegram channel: “Will Finland’s security be strengthened? Certainly not. They understand that Russia will have to take retaliatory measures and expand its military presence.”
However, according to Mr. Kosachev, the situation will not change much from a practical point of view, since Finland has been an official partner of NATO since 1994 and has participated in a number of activities of this alliance... "According to NATO experts, Finland is even more compatible with NATO than some of the actual members of this organization," he commented.
Huy Hoang (according to TASS, Rossiya-24, Reuters)
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