Moscow Will Follow NATO Developments in Finland and Sweden

May 18, 2022 (EIRNS)—Warnings about further NATO expansion continue to come out of Moscow. “We will closely follow what will be happening in the wake of Finland and Sweden’s accession to NATO from the standpoint of military infrastructure. Not a single development that might give NATO a stronger presence on the territories of these countries will remain unretaliated, without a proportionate, symmetric or asymmetric response from Russia,” said Sen. Konstantin Kosachev, Deputy Speaker of Russia’s Federation Council.

Senator Kosachev dismissed the idea that Turkey’s objections are real obstacles to the admission of Finland and Sweden into the alliance. “Turkey may complicate and slow down the process of Sweden’s and Finland’s admission to NATO, but as soon as it has managed to negotiate certain conditions for itself, this issue will no longer cause any objections from the Turkish leadership, because Ankara is in pursuit of its own aims and has no fundamental objections to NATO’s expansion and the admission of Finland and Sweden,” Kosachev said.

Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said Moscow will have to seek compensating measures when Finland and Sweden join NATO. “You see, they do not know themselves what they really want. They are tormented by their own misunderstanding of what a future world will be like. They suffer from the inevitability that this world will be multipolar,” Ryabkov said on the Rossiya-24 round-the-clock television news channel on Tuesday, reported TASS. “When the period of analysis in Moscow of the effects of this step on the general configuration of forces and in Europe and the north of Europe is over, we will have to take compensatory measures, and nobody will stand to gain.”