Senator promised to strengthen troops on the border when Finland joins NATO

RUSSIA will strengthen its military presence on the border if Finland joins NATO and the alliance deploys its weapons on its territory, Viktor Bondarev, former Commander-in-Chief of the Aerospace Forces (VKS) of Russia, HEAD of the Federation Council Committee on Defense and Security, said on TELEGRAM.

“In the event that NATO offensive, strike weapons are deployed in Finland, in close proximity to us, we will strengthen our borders and strengthen the Russian grouping of troops on the border. Nothing threatens Russia's security,” he wrote (quoted by RIA Novosti).

The Finnish authorities announced the country's decision to join NATO on the afternoon of May 15th. First it must be approved by Parliament. The day before, the president of the state, Sauli Niinistö, phoned his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin and notified him that the country would submit an application to the alliance in the near future. After the conversation, he said that Putin did not "repeate threats from his subordinates", and the conversation itself turned out to be calm and cold-blooded.

At the same time, Putin noted that Helsinki is making a mistake by joining the alliance, since there is no threat to its security.

Niinistö himself doubted that Russia might attack Finland in the future. He said that he did not believe in such a scenario, but stressed that in the current conditions, when Europe was divided, the country did not have many opportunities left to maintain a non-bloc status.

After Helsinki announced the decision, the Kremlin said that they perceive Finland's accession to the bloc as a threat. Moscow's retaliatory actions will depend on how NATO advances its military infrastructure and organizes the "expansion process" in general, Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov said. The fact that NATO will strengthen its presence at the borders of Finland before its entry into the alliance, as well as deploy military infrastructure in the Baltic Sea region, was said by the bloc's Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg.