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Sweden may turn into logistics hub for NATO — newspaper

The media points out that NATO members will be able to use the island of Gotland as a transport hub, which will facilitate the defense of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania

© AP Photo/Sergei Grits

LONDON, March 7. /TASS/. NATO membership may turn Sweden into a logistics hub and a reinforcement route, the Financial Times writes.

According to the newspaper, Sweden brings with it the island of Gotland, opening up new supply and reinforcement routes. The Financial Times points out that NATO members will be able to use it as a transport hub, which will facilitate the defense of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania who earlier relied on the Suwalki Gap, a narrow strip separating the Baltic countries from Poland.

"The Baltic Sea becomes a NATO lake," the paper quoted Latvian Foreign Minister Krisjanis Karins as saying. "It reduces the vulnerability of the Baltics through only the Suwalki Gap. The entire security of the region is made stronger because it makes the eastern Baltic less vulnerable," he added.

The accession of Sweden and Finland will also "enable Nato to look at northern Europe as one big region, without a gaping hole in the map," Swedish Prime Minister Carl Bildt said, according to the newspaper. "From Narva [in Estonia] to Nuuk [in Greenland] east-west, and Kirkenes [in Norway] to Krakow [in Poland] north-south," he specified.

Hungary’s parliament approved Sweden’s accession to NATO on February 26. The Nordic country’s flag will be raised at the NATO headquarters in Brussels on March 11. Hungary was the last NATO country to ratify Sweden’s NATO membership protocol. Finland and Sweden were officially invited to join the alliance at a NATO summit in Madrid in June 2022.

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