Vice President of the Russian Security Council, Dmitry Medvedevthreatened this Thursday with the deployment of nuclear weapons in the Baltic if Sweden and Finland join NATO.
“It will be necessary to reinforce the group of ground forces, the anti-aircraft defense, deploy important naval forces in the waters of the Gulf of Finland. And in that case it will no longer be possible to speak of a Baltic without nuclear weapons. The balance must be restored,” the senior official wrote on his Telegram account.
Medvedev, former prime minister and president of Russia between 2008 and 2012, stressed that for Moscow “it is not so important how many countries there are in NATO, 30 or 32”, since “two more, two less, due to their weight and population, They don’t make much of a difference.”
But he stressed that if Sweden and Finland join NATO, the length of the land border between Russia and the Atlantic Alliance will double, so – he stressed – it will have to be strengthened.
Medvedev indicated that It makes no sense to think that Russian “special military operation” in Ukraine is to blame for Sweden and Finland joining NATO.
“This is not so. Firstly, there have been attempts to drag them into NATO before, and secondly, what is important, we do not have territorial disputes, like with Ukraine, with those countries,” he added.
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The former Russian president indicated that public opinion in Sweden and Finland is almost evenly divided on the need to join NATO. “Nnobody sensible wants prices and taxes to rise; let the tension rise along the borders, let there be Iskander (missiles), hypersonic (weapons) and nuclear-armed ships literally a stone’s throw from your house,” he added.
“We are going to trust that the good sense of our northern neighbors prevails. And if not, as they say, they have brought it on themselves,” he summarized.