The Kremlin says it will “take measures” for Finland’s entry into NATO

The Kremlin warned this Tuesday that Finland’s entry into NATO “will greatly worsen the situation” and stressed that Moscow is “forced to adopt tactical and strategic countermeasures” in the face of what he describes as an “intrusion” by the Atlantic alliance into its security.

“The expansion of NATO is an encroachment on our security and our interests. This is how we see it,” Kremlin spokesman Dimitri Peskov said, as quoted by the Russian newspaper Report. “This forces us to adopt tactical and strategic countermeasures,” he said.

Peskov stressed that Moscow will carefully analyze the situation in Finland before adopting these countermeasures, although he noted that bilateral relations will undergo changes. “This affects the nature of bilateral relations with the states that become new members of the Alliance,” he asserted. Thus he declared that NATO “is an enemy structure” to Russia, although he pointed out that “the situation in Ukraine is quite different from that in Finland, so it is not possible to compare it”. So he claimed that Russia “had no disputes with Finland” and pointed out that in the case of Ukraine “the situation is diametrically different and potentially dangerous”. “This implied the need for a special operation to achieve the objectives,” he concluded.

For his part, the Russian Minister of Defense, Sergei Shoigu, condemned that NATO “adopts a series of measures to increase the combat readiness of the joint armed forces” and “increasing combat training and reconnaissance activities near the borders with Russia and Belarus».

Shoigu emphasized that Finland’s accession to NATO creates the risk of a “significant” expansion of the conflict in Ukraine, although he emphasized that this will not affect the outcome of the invasion, launched on February 24, 2022, by order of the president. Russian Vladimir Putin.

In this regard, he stated that the United States and its allies have increased their military support to Ukraine and specified that “only this year they are ready to deliver more than 200 Western-made battle tanks and more than 400 armored combat vehicles.”The Ukrainian army is getting long-range weapons, including grenades with a range of up to 150 kilometers“, he added.

Finally, the Russian Minister of Defense assured that Western countries are considering “the possibility of transferring ATACMS surface-to-surface tactical missiles – manufactured by Lockheed Martin – with a range of up to 300 kilometers, as well as F-16 fighters to Kiev”, reports the Russian news agency Tass.