As of: March 13, 2024, 11:36 a.m
By: Momir Takac
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Press
Split
It was to be expected that tensions on the NATO border would increase after Sweden and Finland joined.
Now Putin has openly threatened the countries.
Munich - With Finland's accession to the North Atlantic Treaty in April 2023, the length of NATO's external border has more than doubled by 1,340 kilometers.
President Vladimir Putin has already made it clear several times that Russia doesn't like this.
Now he has made a new threat, which is also directed at Finland's neighbors.
Putin calls Sweden and Finland joining NATO “pointless” – troop relocation to the border announced
Although Russia does not share a border with Sweden, the Scandinavian country's accession, after much back and forth, has strategically important significance for the defense alliance: With Sweden, which had its first NATO deployment less than a week after joining, the presence of the NATO strengthened in the Baltic Sea region.
“This is an absolutely meaningless step (for Finland and Sweden) from the point of view of protecting their own national interests,” Putin said in an interview with the Russian state news agency
Ria Novosti
and state television
Rossiya-1
.
Putin announces troop deployment at NATO border: “Destruction systems will be moved there”
The Kremlin chief immediately followed up with a threat.
“We had no troops there (on the Finnish border), now they will be there.
There were no demolition systems there, now they are being moved there,” he explained.
The message is clear: as you are to me, so am I to you.
To give the declaration of war even more weight, Putin also boasted about his nuclear arsenal in the same interview.
Vladimir Putin talks to Russian journalist Dmitry Kiselev about the war in Ukraine.
© IMAGO/Gavriil Grigorov
Putin had already threatened Finland with moving troops to the border in December.
When Finland and Sweden were still candidates for membership, the Russian ambassador in Stockholm called the countries “legitimate targets of Russian retaliation.”
In its current annual report, the Estonian foreign secret service also expects Moscow to significantly increase the number of military units along the NATO border in the coming years.
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Russian troops on the NATO border: Tensions on the eastern flank are steadily growing
There used to be brisk border and goods traffic between Finland and Russia in the far north-east of Europe.
That changed with the start of the Ukraine war in February 2022. Just over another year later, the once peaceful coexistence has given way to confrontation.
The border crossings are closed, Russia withdrew from a 2012 border agreement, and tensions are constantly growing.
Helsinki recently complained that Putin has been deliberately bringing more and more migrants to the border for months in order to put Finland under pressure.
The government spoke of thousands of refugees.
Russia is also suspected of repeatedly deliberately disrupting the GPS network on NATO's eastern border and in the Baltic Sea region.
Provocations and the “hybrid threat”, as Finland calls it, are unlikely to diminish in the future.
(mt)