Finland officially became a member of the NATO military alliance on Tuesday, after Hungary and Turkey ratified Finland’s membership bid last week, removing the last hurdles to Helsinki’s accession. Finland’s foreign affairs minister, Pekka Haavisto, handed over all the accession documents at NATO’s headquarters in Brussels, in the presence of the group’s secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, and US State Secretary Antony Blinken on Tuesday afternoon. An accession ceremony also will be held later on Tuesday.
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“Finland’s membership is not targeted against anyone. Nor does it change the foundations or objectives of Finland’s foreign and security policy,” Finnish President Sauli Niinisto said in a written statement Tuesday. Finland shares an 832-mile border with Russia, the longest of any European Union member. With Finland’s becoming a member of NATO, the alliance’s border with Russia will double in size
Sweden and Finland formally requested to join NATO in May 2022 in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine but ran into opposition from Turkey, which cited their support for political dissidents and Kurdish organizations that Ankara considers to be terrorist organizations. All of NATO’s member countries must approve new applications.