Russia threatens ‘military and political consequences’ if Finland, Sweden try joining NATO

Russia threatened “military and political consequences” against Finland and Sweden on Friday if they attempted to join NATO.

Russian foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova warned against other countries attempting to join NATO after Russia started a war with Ukraine Thursday.

“Finland and Sweden should not base their security on damaging the security of other countries and their accession to NATO can have detrimental consequences and face some military and political consequences,” Zakharova said in a viral clip of a press conference.

The ministry later posted the same threat on its Twitter. Finland and Sweden have given significant military and humanitarian support to Ukraine since Russia invaded.

One pretext Russia has given for attacking Ukraine is that NATO would not give any assurance that Ukraine would not be allowed to join the intergovernmental military alliance.

Ukraine has been adamant about joining but is now willing to discuss a different status with NATO after hundreds were killed in the first day of fighting the Russians. 

Russia and Ukraine are both sending delegations to Belarus to discuss Ukraine potentially adopting a nonaligned status with NATO.

The talks come as Russia is closing in on Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital city. However, U.S. intelligence says Ukrainians are putting up a better resistance to Russian forces than expected.

Ukraine has been arming its citizens and telling them to create firebombs to resist Russia.