NATO formally invites Finland and Sweden to join alliance

Mike Brest

June 29, 11:26 AM June 29, 11:27 AM

The NATO alliance formally extended invitations to Sweden and Finland to join the alliance on Wednesday, a historic expansion for the allies.

Turkey, a day earlier, agreed to a trilateral agreement with the two aspiring NATO members and ended its holdup of Sweden and Finland's application process. The alliance is currently meeting in Madrid, and there is a heavy focus on Russia's war in Ukraine, which has recently entered its fifth month.

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"The accession of Finland and Sweden will make them safer, NATO stronger, and the Euro-Atlantic area more secure," the alliance said in a statement. "The security of Finland and Sweden is of direct importance to the Alliance, including during the accession process."

The decision will now go to each of the member states’ parliaments and legislatures for final ratification. NATO leaders said they expect the process to move quickly.

"Then we will invite Finland and Sweden to join NATO. And that demonstrates that NATO's door is open. It demonstrates that President Putin has not succeeded in closing NATO’s door," NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said in a press conference alongside President Joe Biden. "He is getting the opposite of what he wants. He wants less NATO; President Putin is getting more NATO by Finland and Sweden joining our Alliance."

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov described their admittance to the alliance as "destabilizing."

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“We consider the expansion of NATO a purely destabilizing factor in international affairs,” Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said, according to a report by Ria Novosti, a Russian state news agency. "This does not add security, neither to those who expand and who are among the joiners, nor to other countries that perceive the alliance as a threat."

Russia has frequently criticized NATO's expansion east toward its borders, but the war in Ukraine has unintentionally united NATO allies and brought the alliance closer to Moscow's territory.