Finland and Sweden could join NATO as early as this summer in response to Moscow’s ongoing military assault on Ukraine, according to a report from Britain’s The Times newspaper, on Monday.
The Finnish application to join the bloc is expected to be submitted in June, with Sweden following suit shortly after that, unnamed US officials told the British newspaper.
The possible membership of the two Nordic nations was “a topic of conversation and multiple sessions” during the summit of NATO’s foreign ministers in Brussels last week, the sources said. Finland’s FM Pekka Haavisto and his Swedish counterpart Ann Linde were both present at the two-day talks.
Helsinki and Stockholm “would be real feathers in NATO’s cap as net contributors,” especially in terms of intelligence-gathering and air-force capabilities, according to a European diplomat who talked to the paper.
Russia, Finland and Sweden all have access to the Baltic Sea, with a shared Russian-Finnish land border spanning some 1,340km.