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Senator says Russian-Finnish ‘border of good neighborliness’ now thing of the past

Russia vowed to retaliate should NATO militarize Sweden and Finland

MOSCOW, July 5. /TASS/. The border between Russia and Finland has ceased to be a "border of neighborliness," Deputy Speaker of the Federation Council (upper house of parliament) Konstantin Kosachev said on Tuesday.

Earlier in the day, the ambassadors of 30 NATO countries signed the Accession Protocols for Finland and Sweden at NATO’s Headquarters. The two Nordic nations will become members of the US-led military bloc once all NATO nations ratify the documents.

"The land border between Russia and Finland will never again be a border of good-neighborliness, an open border with a lot of cross-border cooperation projects, where people move freely and put these projects into practice together," the senator predicted.

"And the regional border - the border on the Baltic Sea, the border on the northern seas - will no longer be a border of cooperation and implementation of joint projects, too," he told the Rossiya-24 TV channel.

According to Kosachev, by joining NATO, these Nordic countries have downgraded their relations with Russia from friendly and good-neighborly - as with Finland; or neutral, as in the case of Sweden - to "confrontational and hostile."

Russia vowed to retaliate should NATO militarize Sweden and Finland, he noted.

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