Finland joins NATO as Russian war prompts shift

Finland becomes the 31st member of NATO on April 4, in a historic strategic shift provoked by Moscow's war on Ukraine, which doubles the US-led alliance's border with Russia.

Last year, the Kremlin's all-out invasion of Ukraine upended Europe's security landscape and prompted Finland - and its neighbour Sweden - to drop decades of non-alignment.

Allies Türkiye and Hungary, for different reasons of their own, delayed Finland's bid to come under the NATO umbrella - and Stockholm's progress remains blocked.

But last week, the Turkish parliament voted to clear Finland's last hurdle.

Completing the ratification in well under a year still makes this the fastest membership process in the alliance's recent history.

All that remained were Tuesday's highly choreographed formalities at NATO headquarters.

Finland's foreign minister will hand over the formal accession papers to US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, the keeper of NATO's founding treaty.

Then the country's blue-and-white flag will be raised next to those of its new allies, between those of Estonia and France, in front of the gleaming headquarters in Brussels.

"This is really an historic day. It's a great day for the alliance," NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg said.

Joining NATO places Finland under the alliance's Article Five, the collective defence pledge that an attack on one member "shall be considered an attack against them all".

This was the guarantee Finnish leaders decided they needed as they watched Russian President Vladimir Putin's devastating assault lay waste to swathes of Ukraine.

"President Putin went to war against Ukraine with a clear aim to get less NATO," Stoltenberg said. "He's getting the exact opposite."

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