Are Finland and Sweden going from neutral to Nato?
[BBC] Finland and Sweden could apply for Nato membership within days - a monumental shift for two nations with a long history of wartime neutrality and staying out of military alliances.
Russia strongly opposes the two states joining and uses the expansion of the West's defensive military alliance as a pretext for its war in Ukraine.
Doing so would end over 200 years of Swedish non-alignment. Finland adopted neutrality following a bitter defeat by the Soviet Union during World War Two.
Finnish public support for joining Nato was for years at around 20-25%. But since Russia's invasion of Ukraine, it has shot up to a record high of 76%, according to the latest opinion poll. In Sweden, 57% of the population want to join, again far higher than before the war.
Posted by: Besoeker 2022-05-11 |