Sweden is expected to officially adopt Enter NATO Thursday, two years later in Washington Russia’s intervention in Ukraine forced a complete rethinking of national security policy and realized that the alliance offered the best guarantee of security.
Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson is in Washington to hand over the final documents, according to a White House statement. President Joe Biden’s State of the Union Address Sweden will join on Thursday.
“Having Sweden as a NATO ally will make the United States and our allies safer,” the statement said.
Kristersson said that NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg informed him that Sweden was officially invited for membership after all member states accepted the country’s membership protocol.
“Sweden will soon become the 32nd member of NATO,” he said.
Separately, the Swedish government said that it will make an official decision on the country’s accession to NATO on Thursday.
The addition of Sweden and Finland, which share an 830-mile border with Russia, is the most significant expansion for NATO in decades. is also a blow for Russian President Vladimir Putin tried to prevent further consolidation of the union.
Sweden will benefit from the alliance’s common defense guarantee, according to which an attack on one member will be treated as an attack on all.
“We have to face the world because sometimes it’s not what we want,” Kristersson said after Hungary became the last NATO member to ratify Sweden’s membership last week.
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Sweden is adding advanced submarines and a significant number of domestically produced Gripen fighter jets to NATO forces, which will be a crucial link between the Atlantic and Baltic states.
Russia threatened to take unspecified “political and military-technical countermeasures” in response to Sweden’s move.
Although Stockholm has moved closer to NATO over the past two decades, membership represents a clear break from Sweden’s more than 200-year history of shunning military alliances and staying neutral during wartime.
After World War II, he gained international fame as a champion of human rights, and when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, successive governments cut military spending.
Back in 2021, its defense minister rejected NATO membership, only for the then Social Democratic government to apply a few months later, along with neighboring Finland.
Although Finland joined last year, Sweden waited because Turkey and Hungary, which have friendly relations with Russia, delayed ratifying Sweden’s membership.
Turkey approved Sweden’s request in January.
Hungary delayed this move until Kristersson made a goodwill visit to Budapest on February 23, where the two countries agreed on the fighter jet.