The Scandinavian country would face a power outage from Russia from this Saturday in retaliation for its approach to the Alliance
Jens Stoltenberg envisioned a completely clear path. But a handful of hours have been enough for the first dense cloud to fall on it. NATO’s secretary general promised on Thursday a “smooth and swift” accession process for Finland (and Sweden too). He assumed that the thirty members of the Atlantic Alliance, like him, were celebrating an imminent expansion of historic significance that would also “strengthen” the military organization.
But Turkey, which has been a member of the institution for seventy years, is the first to vote against. And with that a first crack opens at an unfortunate moment. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan will not make it so easy for the two Scandinavian countries to join the military organization. Moreover, it is a priori against. And that points to a serious problem. Because any request for integration can only come about with full consensus and every country has the right to veto. Their national parliaments have to approve it.
Erdogan did not express his rejection literally, but also did not leave much room for alternative interpretations. “We are closely following the events regarding Sweden and Finland and our view is not positive,” he said yesterday. And what reasons does he give? Purely homely. He believes that Finland and Sweden – he launched the same darts against the Netherlands and Greece – are ‘host houses of many terrorist organisations’. A direct allusion to the members of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and the revolutionary DHKP-C, whom Ankara points to as responsible for the guerrilla wars that have been going on in the country since 1984. It went even further, “Some are even in their parliaments,” he added.
The Turkish leader did not miss the moment to attack his neighbor with whom he has a historic disagreement, Greece. I really put everything together. If Erdogan says he doesn’t want Finland and Sweden, it’s because “we’re not going to make the same mistake we did with Greece”. It went back to 1952, the year of Turkey’s own integration and also the same year it gave the green light to Greece to step forward. All with the same goal: that the historical disputes between the two countries eventually dilute. “We cannot make the same mistake twice,” the president reiterated.
Whether the Turkish ‘no’ is more or less steadfast remains to be seen. Those themselves (Finland and Sweden) downplay the drama of Erdogan’s words. Swedish Foreign Minister Ann Linde hoped that eventually “and if we decide to go in, we will receive positive messages from all countries.” Finnish colleague Pekka Haavisto asked for “patience” and to proceed “step by step”, implying that these kinds of dissonant notes are part of a choreography that will last up to a year.
And that, although it was supposed to start formally this weekend with Finland’s formal presentation of the request, it’s already starting to cause problems. After the threats from Moscow, the first effective reprisals against Helsinki followed. And it is that from next Saturday, Finland will no longer receive Russian energy. Direct blow to his rapprochement with the Atlantic Alliance. But part of a sum and continues in that fight Moscow is waging against Europe for its support of Ukraine and its cascade of sanctions.
First it was up to Poland and Bulgaria (they did not want to pay for the gas supply in rubles), on Thursday more than 600 kilometers of Polish pipelines were ‘sealed’ so that the blue fuel would no longer go to Germany. And now Finland is without Russian electricity. RAO Nordic Oy, the European subsidiary of the Russian energy company Inter RAO, confirmed this late Friday afternoon via its institutional website. “We are forced to suspend the import of electricity from May 14.” A situation so exceptional that it is unprecedented.
The company itself underlined it: “It is the first time in more than twenty years of our commercial history.” The reason? The lack of cash income with which to make the payments for the electricity imported from Russia. “We hope that the situation will improve soon and that electricity trade with Russia can be resumed,” the company said. In quantitative terms, we speak of 10% of the country’s total energy needs.
Moderate restlessness. If one takes into account that the country’s electricity company (Fingrid) assured that “the missing import” will be supplied “by importing more electricity from Sweden” and with national production. In qualitative terms, what has been said, the first retaliation.
Which, by the way, the Kremlin denied. In their own way. Vladimir Putin’s spokesman, Dimitri Peskov, recalled that the giant Gazprom “has repeatedly demonstrated its reliability as a supplier of energy resources”. And he called the reports pointing to the Finnish energy strangulation a “journalistic hoax”. Although he did remember that there is a new payment regime. The key is in the maligned ruble.
Source: La Verdad
I am an experienced and passionate journalist with a strong track record in news website reporting. I specialize in technology coverage, breaking stories on the latest developments and trends from around the world. Working for Today Times Live has given me the opportunity to write thought-provoking pieces that have caught the attention of many readers.
