MOSCOW, December 15. /TASS/. Moscow expresses regret regarding the threat that has now emerged from Finland, a country with which Russia long shared a splendid relationship, Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.
"It will undoubtedly lead [to rising tensions between Russia and Finland]," he said, commenting on Helsinki’s decision to sign a defense agreement with Washington.
"We can only regret the move because we used to have great relations with Finland. Neither of us threatened the other; there were no problems and no claims against each other as we did not infringe on each other’s interests but demonstrated mutual respect, and so on," Peskov noted.
According to him, now that "Finland has become a NATO member and NATO’s military infrastructure is going to enter Finland <…> it will definitely pose a threat" to Russia.
Earlier, the Finnish government announced plans to sign a defense cooperation agreement with the US on December 18. The Helsingin Sanomat newspaper, in turn, reported that under the agreement Finland would provide the US with access to 15 bases in the Nordic country. The document largely concerns the status of NATO forces. A number of other NATO members, including Latvia, Lithuania, Norway and Estonia, have already signed bilateral agreements with the United States. Denmark and Sweden are in talks with Washington on the issue.
Finnish-US negotiations on the agreement lasted from August 2022 to October 2023. Many Finnish experts are skeptical about the document, saying that Finland is giving up a good measure of its sovereignty. However, the move has not sparked any public debate within the country.