MOSCOW, April 5. /TASS/. Finland’s accession to NATO and Sweden’s efforts to join the alliance have brought the era of security in Northern Europe to an end, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told the Sputnik radio station on Wednesday.

In commenting on NATO’s expansion to Northern European countries, the diplomat pointed out that the United States had long been "promoting everything that destroys European security" on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference. "As a matter of fact, this is what has happened to Northern Europe," Zakharova said, emphasizing that, for many years, these countries’ neutrality had guaranteed them an "aura of safety." "The move to drag them into NATO has ended this era," the Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman stressed.

She noted that US officials keep coming over to Europe from an entirely different continent to pontificate on security issues, guided by opportunistic interests that have no relation to the security of Europe.

In May 2022, Helsinki and Stockholm submitted their applications to join the US-led alliance but the process was blocked by Ankara, which demanded that the two Nordic countries extradite certain individuals to Turkey that Ankara suspects of terrorism and being implicated in the 2016 coup attempt, as well as that bans on weapons supplies to Turkey be lifted. In order to resolve these issues, Turkey, Finland and Sweden signed a memorandum listing specific steps that, according to Ankara, the two Nordic nations should take. Turkey’s parliament passed a bill ratifying a protocol on Finland’s NATO membership on March 30. On Tuesday, Helsinki officially became NATO’s 31st member.