Sweden will apply for NATO membership

Sweden has joined Finland in deciding to apply to join the NATO military alliance in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as President Vladimir Putin said Moscow will “certainly” react to the alliance’s expected enlargement into the two Nordic countries.

“The government has decided to inform NATO that Sweden wants to become a member of the alliance. Sweden’s NATO ambassador will shortly inform NATO,” Swedish Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson told reporters on May 16, effectively ending two centuries of the country’s nonaligned status.

“Russia has said that that it will take countermeasures if we join NATO,” she said. “We cannot rule out that Sweden will be exposed to, for instance, disinformation and attempts to intimidate and divide us.”

The move comes a day after Nordic neighbor Finland, which shares a 1,300-kilometer border with Russia, made a similar announcement. Finland has remained neutral in the postwar era after losing some 10 percent of its territory to the Soviet Union.

Finnish President Sauli Niinisto and Prime Minister Sanna Marin have said that after consulting parliament, their country intends to rapidly apply for NATO membership.

Both countries have moved quickly toward the military alliance since Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine. Their bids to join must be unanimously approved by NATO’s 30 members.

In Moscow, Putin said on May 16 that while Russia did not see Finland and Sweden’s decision to join NATO as a threat, deployment of military infrastructure there may trigger a response from Moscow.

The expansion of NATO to Sweden and Finland poses “no direct threat for us…but the expansion of military infrastructure to these territories will certainly provoke our response,” Putin told a televised summit meeting of the Collective Security Treaty Organization, a Moscow-led military alliance.