Moscow reacted to Finnish desires to join NATO. The Kremlin has made it known that such a membership would pose a threat to Russia, and that it would deal with it. This would constitute the doubling of the borders between the Atlantic Alliance and Russia. The Kremlin spokesman, however, did not specify how.
With our correspondent in Moscow, Jean-Didier Revoin
Guaranteeing the security of the 1,300 kilometers of border shared by Russia and Finland is the problem facing the Kremlin, according to its spokesman, Dmitri Peskov.
We have already stated on several occasions that the enlargement of NATO and the bringing of the military infrastructure of the Alliance closer to our borders will not make the world and our great continent of Europe more stable and more secure.
Moscow therefore perceives this probable enlargement as a threat, but Russia is not taken by surprise. In mid-April, already, Dmitry Medvedev, now vice-president of the Russian Security Council, had affirmed that the accession of Finland and Sweden to the Alliance would force Russia to restore the balance of forces.
The former Russian president then spoke of a grouping of land, air and naval forces to defend the 1,300 kilometers of border that the two countries share. In this regard, he again referred to the end of the denuclearization of the Baltic Sea.
Today, the Kremlin was more measured. Dmitry Peskov noted that the Russian response would depend on developments in NATO’s expansion process and the evolution of the military infrastructure on the borders of the Russian Federation.
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