One of Russian thug Vladimir Putin's goals in the past decade was to weaken the NATO alliance in order to expand Russia's "sphere of influence" to former Warsaw Pact nations. He had a willing collaborator in the Malignant Loser, who tried to chip away at and demoralize the Trans-Atlantic alliance from day one of his regime. A by-product of Putin's belligerence and military invasion of Ukraine has been the unification of NATO countries, who are witnessing the invasion of an independent European nation by an expansionist aggressor, exactly the reason NATO was formed to counter the Soviet Union.
Yesterday, via a statement from his Foreign Ministry, Putin may be unintentionally pushing two non-NATO countries into applying for membership. In a press conference yesterday, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova seemingly warned Finland and Sweden against NATO membership:
"'Finland and Sweden should not base their security damaging the security of other countries,' Zakharova said during the press conference.
'Clearly [the] accession of Finland and Sweden into NATO, which is first and foremost a military alliance, would have serious military-political repercussions that would demand a response from our country,' she said."
What Putin and his regime deliberately fail to recognize is that NATO is a defensive military alliance, meant to repel exactly the kind of attack that he launched on Ukraine, not to damage "the security of other countries." That's obviously Russia's role.
Both Finland and Sweden are providing military and humanitarian aid to Ukraine, which obviously caught Moscow's attention. Finnish President Sauli Niinistö and Swedish Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson both issued strong statements of support for Ukraine, condemning Putin's brutal and unprovoked invasion. Time will tell if Finland and Sweden decide to defy an increasingly desperate Putin and apply for NATO membership.
