Moscow on Thursday ominously warned that it will be forced to strengthen defenses in the Baltic if Finland and Sweden join the NATO alliance, as the war in Ukraine dragged into a seventh week.
Finland and Sweden are deliberating whether to abandon decades of military non-alignment and join NATO, with the two Scandinavian countries’ leaders saying Russia’s war on Ukraine had changed Europe’s whole security landscape.
Former Russian president Dimitri Medvedev, a close ally of President Vladimir Putin, explicitly raised the nuclear threat, in fact, saying Finnish and Swedish NATO membership would mean there could be “…no more talk of any nuclear-free status for the Baltics: the balance must be restored”.
In Ukraine, the country’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said Russian forces, which have pulled back from northern Ukraine after failing to take the capital of Kiev, were “…increasing their activities on the southern and eastern fronts, attempting to avenge their defeats”.
Meanwhile, Moscow claimed that its Black Sea flagship naval vessel, the missile cruise Moskva, had been “seriously damaged” by an explosion that the Russian defense ministry said was caused by ammunition detonating as a result of a fire.
Ukraine, however, said the cruiser had been hit and disabled by it missiles.