Putin's war in Ukraine spurs Finland to join NATO

 Washington Examiner:

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s attempt to overthrow the Ukrainian government has spurred Finland into the fast lane to join NATO in defiance of Russian threats and Kremlin pressure to force a practical contraction of the trans-Atlantic alliance.

“Finland — with a quite great, big probability — will give [an] application for NATO, and then Sweden can follow,” a senior European diplomat told the Washington Examiner. “Finland is ahead. Sweden is not — their discussions are a little bit lagging behind.”

Finland’s application reportedly could come as soon as early May in what would amount to a sprint into NATO from a country that shares an 800-mile border with Russia. That dialogue reflects a sea change in Finnish public opinion in the weeks since Putin ordered more than 150,000 Russian troops into Ukraine.

“The message from NATO and from me is that it is for Finland to decide,” NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg told CNBC on Friday. “We will respect the decision regardless of what the conclusion will be, but if Finland decides to apply for membership, I am confident that NATO allies will warmly welcome them — and we can quite quickly make the decision to have them as a member of the allies.”

...

This is another example of how Putin's aggression in Ukraine is backfiring on him.  He feared Ukraine joining NATO and now others are rushing to join in order to fend off future Russian attacks. It is another way Putin's war against Ukraine has been a total disaster for Russia.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Should Republicans go ahead and add Supreme Court Justices to head off Democrats

Washington Post: Some Democrats eye adding more justices to the Supreme Court to change its ideological bent The once-remote idea has gained the attention of liberals angered by the GOP push to remake the federal courts. Probably the easy way to defeat this court-packing scheme is for Trump to propose doing the same thing now.  It would lead to Democrat denunciations and claims that it would be wrong, thereby blowing up any attempt by them in the unfortunate event of Democrats winning a presidential election.
Read more

29 % of companies say they are unlikely to keep insurance after Obamacare

Conn Carroll: A new survey of 368 midsize to large companies found that 29% of them are considering terminating their active employee health care plans when Obamacare is full implemented in 2014. Only 71% of employers surveyed said they did not expect to drop their health coverage, while 20% said they did not know and 9% said they were planning to exit. The latest survey, conducted by Towers Watson, echoes an ealier survey by McKinsey & Co. finding that 30% of private-sector employers were planning to drop their employee health insurance coverage by 2014. When the Congressional Budget Office crunched Obamacare's spending numbers, they estimated that only 7% of employees currently covered by employer-sponsored plans would lose their plans. ... This means the cost of the health care fiasco will be hundreds of billions more than estimated by the CBO and Congressional Democrat. It is also clear that Obama's pledge that you could keep your health care plan if you wanted t
Read more