On Tuesday, April 3, Finland joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and became its 31st member during a formal ceremony located in Brussels at the NATO headquarters. NATO is a military alliance between countries from North America and Europe. Finland, alongside Sweden, requested to formally join NATO after Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, breaking Finland’s previous position of neutrality. In the past, NATO has drawn criticism from initiating wars in the Middle East and bombing civilian targets in the Balkans. 

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg was excited about what Finland has to offer NATO. According to Stoltenberg, Finland is not just gaining more security from this partnership; it is also adding more to keep NATO one of strongest military alliances in the world. Finland is strengthening NATO’s security on its eastern flank since the Russia-Finland border stretches 800 miles. It is also providing a strong military and defensive techniques. 

“Joining NATO is good for Finland, it is good for Nordic security and it is good for NATO as a whole. Finland brings substantial and highly capable forces, expertise in national resilience and years of experience working side by side with NATO allies. I am deeply proud to welcome Finland as a full-fledged member of our alliance, and I look forward to also welcoming Sweden as soon as possible,” Stoltenberg said.

Before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Finland remained formally non-aligned despite being a close NATO partner for many years. With its entry into NATO, Finland now has more security against a possible Russian invasion. 

Nickolai Butkevich, a Redwood history teacher, shared his thoughts on why Finland may have joined NATO and what it means for Russia. 

“Russia’s argument was that the reason they invaded Ukraine was because NATO was going to expand into Ukraine, and that NATO is using Ukraine as a way of destroying a Russian threat to Russia. Now, Finland has joined NATO which has doubled the border between NATO and Russia. It’s made Russia more strategically hit,” Butkevich said. 

Russia has been primarily quiet on Finland joining NATO. However, a few top officials have spoken about what it means to Russia. In 1990, U.S. Secretary of State James Baker verbally promised Russian head of state Mikhail Gorbachev that NATO would not expand eastward, a promise that NATO has violated multiple times. This is one of the reasons why Russia sees Finland’s entry into NATO as a threat. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov is one top official who talked about the potential threat it brings to Russia.

“We will be watching closely what is going on in Finland, how the NATO alliance will use Finnish territory in terms of deploying weapons, systems and infrastructure there, which will be close to our borders and therefore threaten us. Depending on this, measures will be taken,”Peskov said.