Russia sees “no problem” in Finland and Sweden joining NATO, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday.
“We don’t have problems with Sweden and Finland, such as we have with Ukraine,” Putin said at a press conference in Ashkhabad, the Turkmen capital.
“We have no territorial disputes (…), there is nothing that might bother us from the point of view of Sweden’s and Finland’s accession to NATO”, assured the master of the Kremlin.
“If Finland and Sweden want it, let them join. It’s their business, they can join wherever they want,” he said.
But “in the event of the deployment of military contingents and military infrastructure there, we will be forced to respond symmetrically and create the same threats to the territories from which the threats to us emanate,” warned Vladimir Putin.
The accession process for Sweden and Finland, which decided to join the Alliance in reaction to the Russian offensive in Ukraine underway since February 24, was officially launched on Wednesday at the NATO summit in Madrid.
Russia has so far denounced the aspirations of the two Nordic countries, seeing it in particular as a “destabilizing factor” for international affairs and security.
