Sweden officially joined NATO on Thursday after prolonged resistance from Turkey and Hungary. The accession documents were presented at the US State Department in Washington by Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson. Russia is accordingly angry and is already threatening “countermeasures”.
After two centuries of neutrality, Sweden became the 32nd member of the alliance on Thursday, the US government also announced. The accession was preceded by an almost two-year blockade by Turkey and Hungary against the accession application, which was only abandoned after violent political wrangling.
On Monday, the Swedish flag will be symbolically raised at NATO headquarters in Brussels, alongside those of the other 31 member states.
Moscow threatens retaliation
Russia has threatened “countermeasures of a political and military-technical nature” against Sweden’s NATO membership, especially if troops and weapons are transferred from the military alliance to the country. Moscow has not specified what these measures will consist of.
The Russian news agency Tass carried a comment from a senior Russian politician who called Sweden a ‘danger’. Accession was the “most short-sighted decision” in the kingdom’s history.
All of Scandinavia is now in NATO:
Impressed by Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine, Sweden and Finland broke with their decades-long tradition of military non-alignment and applied to join NATO in May 2022. Because all NATO states had to agree to these requests, a stalemate ensued.
Sweden’s long suffering
Turkey and Hungary in particular objected to Sweden’s accession. Ankara accused Stockholm of having too lax immigration policies and protecting members of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which is banned in Turkey and elsewhere. Budapest accused Stockholm of ‘denigrating’ Hungary in response to Swedish criticism of the restrictions on the rule of law.
While Finland, which has a land border of about 1,300 kilometers with Russia, was given the green light last year and admitted to the alliance in April, Sweden had to wait much longer. Anti-Islamic actions in Sweden, including the burning of the Koran, led to a temporary hardening of the Turkish blockade policy.
Political concessions led to a breakthrough
The fact that the US initiated the long-standing supply of F-16 fighter jets to Turkey contributed to Ankara’s relenting. The Hungarian resistance was overcome, among other things, because Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson agreed to closer military cooperation with Hungary during a visit to Budapest. In January, the Turkish parliament ratified Sweden’s accession to NATO, followed by the parliament in Budapest in February.
Source: Krone
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