On April 4, 2023, Finland, neighboring Russia, officially joined the North Atlantic Alliance, “breaking” the Kremlin narrative about the inadmissibility of “NATO expansion to the east,” which became the key “reason” for the invasion of Ukraine.
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Photo – reuters.com
About the fact that the Russian elite has intensified threats towards NATO member countries, in this way intending to fetter the West and create informational prerequisites to justify a likely long-term geopolitical confrontation with Western states, writes NBN, citing the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) .
As it became known, the Russian Foreign Ministry does not stop speaking threateningly about Finland due to the fact that this state allegedly lost “its independence in making foreign policy decisions” due to membership in the Alliance. An identical narrative is constantly being “thrown in” by Moscow to confirm that Ukraine is controlled by NATO and is being used to support the threat level of the Russian Federation.
For example, on the eve of April 6, the Russian Ambassador to Finland Pavel Kuznetsov reported ;—this Scandinavian state has embarked on a “destructive course” in its relations with Russia, and it is the integration of Finland into NATO that will transform the Baltic region into a “zone of potential escalation.”
In addition, Kuznetsov openly threatened both Helsinki and the Alliance countries, assuring that his aggressor country would be forced to respond to strengthening NATO’s material/human potential or the transfer of nuclear weapons to Finland, and that Moscow’s response would be “adequate, but ;not necessarily symmetrical.” Also, according to the Russian diplomat, Finland joined the “war party to defeat Russia,” thereby “Russophobically” causing a rupture in Russian-Finnish relations.
ISW analysts emphasized the Kremlin’s constant threats in the on the side of the NATO member states are aimed at containing the efforts of the West, and statements by the Russian Federation about the existence of a potential risk with the Alliance vector should form the information basis “to justify and support the proposed long-term geopolitical confrontation with the West.”
Earlier, we wrote that NATO assessed the likelihood of an attack on Ukraine from Belarus.