‘Good day’ for Nato as Finland to officially join on Tuesday

Nato secretary general says alliance will make the new member safer

Finland will join Nato on Tuesday after a swift accession process following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

“We will raise the Finnish flag for the first time here at Nato headquarters,” said Jens Stoltenberg, the secretary general. “It will be a good day for Finland’s security, for Nordic security and for Nato as a whole.”

Moscow immediately responded by pledging to boost troop numbers in its western and northwestern regions.

Finland has a 1,300km (810 miles) border with Russia, meaning Nato’s direct frontier with Russia will roughly double in length.

President Sauli Niinisto will travel to Brussels to take part in Tuesday’s ceremony as his nation becomes the 31st member of the alliance.

Its membership, first sought in May last year, was ratified by Turkey last week, lifting the last hurdle to accession. Tuesday will mark the first enlargement of the defence bloc since North Macedonia joined in 2020.

Responding to Finland’s accession, Russian deputy foreign minister Alexander Grushko said Russia would strengthen its military capacity in its western and northwestern regions, according to the state-owned news agency RIA.

Mr Stoltenberg said: “President Putin went to war against Ukraine with the clear aim to get less Nato. He’s getting the exact opposite.”

Sweden’s bid to join has stalled due to opposition from Turkey, whose president has said his country would not ratify membership before disputes between Ankara and Stockholm were resolved. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government has accused Sweden of being too soft on groups that it deems to be terror organisations.

Hungary’s parliament also has yet to ratify Sweden’s accession to Nato, and it remains unclear when it will do so.

It comes just a day after Finland’s prime minister Sanna Marin conceded defeat in a tight election for parliament, denying her a second term in office.

Petteri Orpo’s centre-right National Coalition Party claimed victory on Sunday evening with around 97.7 per cent of the votes counted, coming out on top at 20.7 per cent.

The right-wing populist party The Finns won 20.1 per cent and Ms Marin’s Social Democrats 19.9 per cent.

Mr Orpo’s party, which has advocated Nato membership for two decades, will need to make firm commitments on military spending to meet a Nato target of 2 per cent of a member nation’s GDP being spent on defence.

With additional reporting from the Associated Press