Putin warns Finland over NATO membership: ‘Now there will be problems’

After Finland joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in April this year, Sauli Niinistö’s government closed the border with Russia this week and aroused the effusive reaction of President Vladimir Putin, who remarked that before “there were no disputes” and warned that “now there will be”. Immersed in his electoral campaign for the next elections in Russia and the discussion of military strategies for the conflict with Ukraine, Putin is not lost on the news that may affect his foreign relations policy. After the Finnish government closed the 1,340-kilometer border it shares with Russia and the signing of a new agreement with the United States, the Russian president was blunt in his point of view. They – for the West – dragged Finland into NATO. Did we have any disputes with them? All disputes, including territorial disputes from the mid-20th century, have long since been resolved,” Putin remarked.Along these lines, the president noted that “there were no problems there, now there will be because we will create the Leningrad military district and concentrate a certain number of military units there.” During the event in support of his candidacy for the 2024 elections, Putin referred to the conflict with Ukraine and blamed the West for using its influence. “Having unleashed a real aggression – which intensified year after year – the Western elites hoped not only to collapse Russia’s economy and social sphere, but also our political and state system,” he argued. The methods for such destabilization are well known and were tested by Western elites in many regions of the world during the so-called Color Revolutions, but those recipes did not work and will not work in relation to Russia, a free, independent and sovereign state,” the Russian president added.

Original source in Spanish