Finnish Foreign Affairs Minister Pekka Haavisto (L) shakes hands with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, flanked by NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg (C) as he hands over Finland's accession to NATO documents, during a joining ceremony at a NATO - North Atlantic Council (NAC) Foreign Affairs ministers' meeting, at the NATO headquarters in Brussels, on April 4, 2023. - Finland on April 4 became the 31st member of NATO, wrapping up its historic strategic shift with the deposit of its accession documents to the alliance. (Photo by Olivier MATTHYS / POOL / AFP) (Photo by OLIVIER MATTHYS/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)
Finland joins NATO as 31st member
Finland on Tuesday became an official member of the NATO military alliance, prompted by Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine last year.
The Nordic nation is the 31st country to join the alliance, which vows in its treaty that an attack on one of its members is an attack on them all. It is a historic moment for Finland, which has followed a path of neutrality for decades.
“Finland’s membership is not targeted against anyone. Nor does it change the foundations or objectives of Finland’s foreign and security policy,” Finnish President Sauli Niinisto said in a written statement Tuesday.
“Finland has today become a member of the defence alliance NATO. The era of military non-alignment in our history has come to an end. A new era begins,” the Finnish presidency said in a statement.
“Each country maximizes its own security. So does Finland. At the same time, NATO membership strengthens our international position and room for manoeuvre. As a partner, we have long actively participated in NATO activities. In the future, Finland will make a contribution to NATO’s collective deterrence and defence,” it added.
His comments came shortly after the country’s foreign affairs minister, Pekka Haavisto, handed over all the accession documents in Brussels, at NATO’s headquarters, in the presence of the group’s secretary-general, Jens Stoltenberg, and U.S. State Secretary Antony Blinken.
“Welcome to the alliance,” Stoltenberg told Finnish representatives at the ceremony.
Authorities in Helsinki decided that in the wake of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the country was no longer safe on its own and applied to join the alliance a few months later. Finland shares an 832-mile border with Russia, the longest of any European Union member. NATO’s border with Russia will roughly double in size after Finland’s accession.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Tuesday that Russia would closely follow any NATO deployments in Finland and that his country would take “counter-measures” to this accession, according to Reuters.
Finland applied to become a member of NATO at the same time as Sweden. However, it is still unclear what the future holds for Stockholm.
Its decision to join the alliance also marked a watershed moment in the country’s history, given it had followed an independent military policy for more than 200 years.
With CNBC and agency reports
