Andy Field ABC News - May 12, 2022 - KRDO’s Afternoon News

Finland’s leaders have come out in favor of applying to join NATO, and Sweden could do the same within days, in a historic realignment on the continent 2 1/2 months after Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.  The Kremlin reacted by warning it will be forced to take retaliatory “military-technical” steps.  Finland’s president and prime minister announced that the Nordic country should apply right away for membership in NATO, the military defense pact founded in part to counter the Soviet Union. “You (Russia) caused this. Look in the mirror,” Finnish President Sauli Niinisto said.  This would represent a major change in Europe’s security landscape: Sweden has avoided military alliances for more than 200 years, while Finland adopted neutrality after its defeat by the Soviets in World War II.  Public opinion in both nations shifted dramatically in favor of NATO membership after the invasion in February, which stirred fears in countries along Russia’s flank that they could be next.  Such an expansion of the alliance would leave Russia surrounded by NATO countries in the Baltic Sea and the Arctic and would amount to a stinging setback for Putin, who had hoped to divide and roll back NATO in Europe but is instead seeing the exact opposite happen.  Meanwhile, U.S. troops joined forces from Britain, France, Italy and allied countries in the region today in a military exercise held in NATO’s newest member, North Macedonia, aimed at displaying deployment readiness along the alliance’s eastern borders.