Finland becomes a NATO member.

Finland joined the NATO military alliance Tuesday, dealing a major blow to Russian Vladimir Putin with a historic re-alignment of Europe's post-cold war security landscape triggered by Moscow's invasion of Ukraine. This marks a definitive shift in Europe's post World War 2 alignment and isolating

Russia further. By joining NATO Finland has ended its 70 years of military non-alignment which shares a 1,340 km border with Russia. In the Cold War years, a policy of neutrality between the Soviet Union and West was known as 'Finlandization' , it has been one of the options discussed for Ukraine before Russia invaded it.

Why Finland joins NATO and its significance.

The answer is simple- Russia going to war against Ukraine has made its smaller neighbours crave the powerful military backing the NATO offers, under whose charter, every member being attacked. Soon after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Finland and Sweden applied for NATO membership. NATO was set up after World War 2 with the express purpose of containing the Soviet Union. The members of the alliance include : since 1949, the 12 founding countries of Belgium, Canada, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, Norway, Portugal, the United Kingdom and the United States ;Greece and Turkey joined in 1952; Germany in 1955; Spain in 1982; Czechia, Hungary and Poland in 1999; Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia joined in 2004; Albania and Croatia in 2009;

Montenegro in 2017; North Macedonia in 2020 and finally, Finland. For Finland, while the country is in a better position in terms of security, it is losing out on the significant trade and tourist revenue it was making from Russia, and from its position as the West's gateway to the East. Russia has said, as per reported by Reuters, that Finland has committed "a dangerous historical mistake that would fray relation from Moscow and undo its status as a confidence-building presence in the Baltic Sea and Europe at large". "This is now a thing of past. Finland has become one of the small members of NATO that doesn't decide anything, losing its special voice in international affairs. We are sure that history will judge this hasty step", a ministry statement said. For NATO, the addition of Finland brings in a military trained to repel an attack, and, by doubling its border with the country, brings it in a better position to station weapons, including missile launchpads, closer to Russia. For Russia, Finland's move has brought NATO closer to its doors, the very thing it most strenuously opposes, and the prevention of which it has cited as one of the reasons to invade Ukraine.

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