COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) — Finnish President Alexander Stubb said on Tuesday that joining the NATO alliance a year ago had transformed his country into a “frontline state”, given that it had doubled the military bloc’s border with Russia.
Finland, which became NATO’s 31st member in April 2023, has a 1,340-kilometer (832-mile) land border with Russia that runs mostly through thick forests in the south and rugged landscapes in the north. ‘Arctic.
Stubb was visiting neighboring Sweden and spoke at a joint news conference in Stockholm with the Swedish prime minister on Tuesday. Ulf Kristersson. For decades, both countries adopted a policy of neutrality, refusing to take sides in wars or join a military alliance, but that changed after Russia invaded Ukraine in early 2022.
“Sweden and Finland therefore not only share a common history. We share a common future,” Kristersson said at the press conference. His country became NATO’s 32nd member in March.
Finland was part of the Kingdom of Sweden – essentially making up the eastern half of the country – for almost 700 years, until 1809, when the area known today as Finland was ceded to the Empire Russian following the Napoleonic Wars in Europe. The autonomous Grand Duchy of Finland declared its independence from Russia in 1917, in the midst of the Russian Revolution.
Earlier in the day, Stubb, who was elected president of the Nordic country in February, said NATO membership “is the final step towards adopting the Western community of values” for both countries. Both countries joined the European Union in 1995.
“Finland and Sweden play a key role in promoting peace. It seems paradoxical, but this is precisely why we want a strong army and why we joined NATO,” Stubb said while addressing the Swedish parliament.
Stubb, who spoke in Swedish, which is Finland’s second official language, said it was “impossible to overstate how important it is that we take this step together.”
Unlike most European countries, the Finnish president holds executive power in formulating foreign and security policy in conjunction with the government, particularly regarding non-EU countries such as the United States, Russia and China.
Stubb was making his first state visit abroad to Sweden, where he was received, among others, by Swedish King Carl XVI Gustaf and his wife Queen Silvia.
—- Jari Tanner in Helsinki contributed to this report. ___
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