MOSCOW, February 9. /TASS/. Finland and Sweden will turn into "frontline" countries after joining NATO, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Grushko said at a Valdai Discussion Club meeting on Thursday.
"Finland and Sweden unexpectedly abandoned the policy of military non-alignment, which provided the strongest security guarantees to these countries in the past decades and was the basis of their international authority," he noted.
"In fact, both of them are about to turn into frontline countries whose military development policy won’t be decided in Helsinki and Stockholm but in Brussels and Washington," the diplomat added.
On May 18, 2022, Helsinki and Stockholm submitted their applications to join NATO but the process was blocked by Turkey who demanded that the two countries extradite those suspected of terrorism and being involved in the 2016 coup to Ankara, and lift bans on weapons supplies to Turkey. Ankara and Budapest have not yet ratified the protocols on Finland and Sweden joining NATO.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said at a summit of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) on May 16, 2022, that Moscow would take measures in response to the expansion of NATO’s military infrastructure to Finland and Sweden. However, he pointed out that NATO’s expansion to Finland and Sweden would not pose a direct threat to Moscow since Russia had no problems with those countries.