Finnish leaders on Thursday supported applying for joining NATO, and Sweden could do the same in a few days, in the historical rearrangement in the continent two and a half months after Russian President Vladimir Putin to Ukraine sent vibrations on fear vibrations through neighbors through neighbors Moscow.
Kremlin reacts with the warning that will be forced to take the steps of “military-technical” retaliation.
On the ground, meanwhile, Russian troops pounded areas in eastern Ukraine, including the last pockets of resistance in Mariupol, as an offensive part to take a vital donbas industrial area, while Ukraine recolated several cities and villages in the northeast of the country.
Finnish President Sauli Niinisto and PM Sanna Marin announced that the Nordic State must immediately register for membership in NATO, a military defense pact that was founded in part against the Soviet Union. “You (Russia) cause this. Look at the mirror, “said Finland President Sauli Niinisto this week.
While the state parliament still has to weigh, the announcement means that Finland will definitely apply – and get revenue – although the process can take months to complete it. Sweden, also considering applying.
That will represent major changes in the European security landscape: Sweden has avoided military alliances for more than 200 years, while Finland adopted neutrality after his defeat by the Soviet in World War II.
Public opinion in the two countries shifted dramatically for NATO membership after the invasion, which aroused fear in countries along the Russian side that they could be the next.
Such an alliance expansion will make Russia surrounded by NATO countries in the Baltic Sea and the North Pole and will be the same as a stinging setback for Putin, who hopes to share and roll back NATO in Europe but instead see the opposite.
Secretary General Nato Jens Stoltenberg said the alliance would welcome Finland and Sweden with open arms.
The Russian Foreign Ministry warned that Moscow “will be forced to take steps to retaliate from military technical and other characteristics to fight threats that arise against national security”.
The explosion was heard on Thursday near the city of Bakhmut, the Donbas area that had experienced heavy battles. The Ukraine military said Russian troops stormed two villages there. The British Ministry of Defense said Russia’s focus on Donbas had left its remaining troops around the northeast city of Kharkiv vulnerable to a counterattack from Ukraine forces, which reclaimed several cities and villages around the city.
However, the Russian rocket attack on Thursday killed one person and injured three in the suburbs of Kharkiv City, said the regional governor. Kharkiv is the second largest city in Ukraine.
Ukraine also said Russian troops had fired artillery launchers and grenades to Ukraine forces towards Zaporizhzhia, who had become a shelter for civilians who fled Mariapol, and attacked in the Chernihiv and Sumy regions to the north.
The air strike last night in Chernihiv killed three people, according to local media.
Also, the number of people who had fled from Ukraine to escape from the Russian invasion of Russia had passed 6 million in the European worst refugee crisis since the end of the second world war, a UN refugee agent on Thursday.
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