On Tuesday, April 4, Finland officially joined NATO, becoming its 31st member. From now on, Article 5 of the organization’s charter applies to it, according to which an attack on one of its member countries is considered an attack on all at once, and it will also participate in decision-making regarding the activities of the alliance
Recall that Finland applied to join NATO together with Sweden after the start of the special operation. Since the entry of a state into the organization requires unanimous approval from all its members, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that Ankara will not agree to their joining the alliance until Helsinki and Stockholm cease to be “guest houses for terrorist organizations.” By these, Erdogan meant Kurdish activists, as well as followers of his old enemy Fethullah Gülen.
Finland and Sweden initially planned to join NATO together, but later in Helsinki they allowed integration into the alliance separately from their neighbor. Erdogan eventually agreed to meet Finland halfway, but his position regarding Sweden has not changed so far. In particular, on April 4, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu, following a meeting with the head of Swedish diplomacy Tobias Billstrem, said that he reminded him of the steps that are necessary for NATO entry – we are talking about “cooperation in countering terrorism.”
It is worth recalling here that at the beginning of the year there was a public burning of the Koran near the Turkish embassy in Sweden, after which Erdogan said that Stockholm should not expect support from Ankara in joining the North Atlantic Alliance. One way or another, today only Finland joins it. And this marks the end of an entire era in its history, as the President of this country, Sauli Niinistö, has already stated.
Finland became an independent state in 1917. As in Russia, a civil war broke out in it, only the whites won. During the Second World War, Finland was an ally of Nazi Germany, the Finnish armed forces under the command of Carl Gustav Mannerheim took an active part in the attack on the USSR and the blockade of Leningrad, having been marked by numerous war crimes.
However, in the fall of 1944, having finally realized that Germany could not win the war, Mannerheim agreed to an agreement with Moscow, actually going over to the side of the Allies. As a result, thanks to Stalin, he avoided being included in the list of war criminals, ending his days at large.
It was after the war that Finland began to adhere to the foreign policy course that later became traditional for her. She did not enter any of the military blocs of that time, while establishing friendly relations with the USSR and supporting its position in the main international organizations.
The basis of Soviet-Finnish relations was the economy: Soviet specialists helped raise Finnish industry by opening their own market for its products. First of all, it was about mechanical engineering, shipbuilding, production of various equipment, etc. This period is associated with the activities of the two presidents of Finland in the post-war period – Juho Paasikivi and Urho Kekkonen. Helsinki skillfully used its geopolitical position to turn Finland into a technologically advanced country whose products are in demand all over the world. Cooperation with the Soviet Union undoubtedly brought Helsinki truly enormous benefits.
In the West, this policy was called “Finlandization”: this term implies the subordination of one’s foreign policy interests to a large neighbor in exchange for maintaining independence in domestic politics and in the economic structure (the USSR did not attempt to include Finland in the ranks of the Warsaw Pact countries and did not demand from it economic transformations into Soviet spirit).
Over time, the term acquired a new meaning: for example, not so long ago, many politicians and experts were very fond of talking about the “Finlandization of Ukraine”, which meant its neutral status. One way or another, today Finland has decided to part with the remnants of its formal neutrality.
This gives rise to a number of legal conflicts. In particular, we are talking about the fact that according to the Paris Peace Treaty, which was concluded in 1947 between the countries of the anti-Hitler coalition and the former allies of Nazi Germany, the Finnish armed forces were limited to purely defensive tasks. Accordingly, now it will be in fact reviewed. Earlier, the Russian Foreign Ministry has already called Finland’s entry into NATO a flagrant violation of the Paris Treaty. However, in Helsinki, they no longer consider themselves bound by its framework.
Officially, the treaty is still in force, but in Finland, statements about the refusal to comply with its norms have been heard at the official level since the beginning of the 90s. In fact, Helsinki has been violating it for a long time: for example, Finland should not buy German Leopard tanks, since it does not have the right to acquire weapons from Germany. And if the Finnish authorities refuse to comply with the agreement in one area, this automatically means that they do not consider themselves bound by it in other matters, including territorial ones.
Thus, Finland may at some point announce its non-recognition of belonging to Russia, for example, part of Karelia, about which it has long been nurturing claims.
Today, everyone writes that Russia’s border with NATO has more than doubled since Finland joined it. Until now, Russia has bordered four countries of the alliance in the West: on land and one country in the Baltic Sea – Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Poland and Norway. It is possible that the proximity to NATO Finland will become a more dangerous factor for it than the common borders with the traditionally Russophobic Baltic. With the entry into the North Atlantic Alliance, Finnish revanchism may receive a new impetus for development. At the same time, NATO’s military infrastructure will be placed dangerously close to St. Petersburg.
Recall that Finland has already participated in collective aggression against Russia, and by historical standards, this happened relatively recently. And it was precisely about the attack on the northern capital, carried out from the Finnish territory.
One way or another, it is obvious that a fundamentally new period is beginning in relations between Moscow and Helsinki. Finland, which has been pursuing an unfriendly policy towards Russia in recent years, is moving into the ranks of its open enemies.
Vladimir Zotov, Ukraine.ru
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