Finland or Sweden joining NATO would spark Russian response, Russia warns

A super fast process would be perhaps a year, even if the NATO end of that process would be one minute.

You’d almost wish there was a temporary membership that could be used e.g for 2 years while the politics is sorted, without delaying the security guarantee. If we vote no, we leave again. But imagine the amount of Russian meddling in a Swedish or Finnish NATO referendum…

From memory, in total, western airforces had to block Russian fighters entering their sovereign territory 240 times in 2021. French fighters were sent several times to stop Russian fighters in the English Channel, e.g. 2000 km from their base.

Then you can add Russia submarines nosing around, spy vessels desguised as fishing vessels going close to points of military interests (for example, when one of the 6 French nuclear submarines dive from its base nearby Brest on the Atlantic Ocean, tens of French fishing vessels are invited to circle around to mask the submarine noise. Every time, there are Russian fish vessels popping up that very day.

In the last decade, Russia has been testing our detection capacities, speed of reaction, going as far as receiving summation fires from Western fighters.

Russia has been in an aggressive attitude for at leat the past decade. That must stop.

I think Sweden should join NATO. Finland is a more complicated case, since they already have a specific agreement with Russia and are so vulnerable. They may prefer the status quo.

Ok.

> However, if I was quite sure nobody would sent troops to Ukraine, Sweden sounds very close to my French ears.

It isn't.

Poland is.

> Finland is more difficult to defend but the Southern part of Sweden, the most inhabited, is close enough to project troops rapidly.

Yes, through Kaliningrad, but Sweden is amongst friends on all sides and Kaliningrad is an enclave that is relatively vulnerable and if it is used as an offensive base then it will be fair game. There is another, much longer and more vulnerable route through the strait between Finland and Estonia, I don't see that one working or working for long if Sweden and Finland would come under attack by Russia. Besides the obvious problems for Russia to operate on multiple fronts. The Northern route is vulnerable and extremely long, there is hardly any infrastructure there.

> The USA would also be able to send fighters and bombers from the Thule airbase to bomb troups on the northern part of Sweden, as well as English airforce from Scotland. Other smaller airforces from Norway, Belgium, etc will help avoiding air superiority to Russia.

This all depends on what Russia intends to do, which nobody really knows. I see only very few realistic options: they are bluffing, or they are utterly deranged. Assuming the latter, all bets are off, Putin might skip all of the preliminaries and drop a nuke on Stockholm, knowing that there is no way they are going to hold territory there to begin with. This would be an escalation the likes of which defies rational thought.

I have family in Latvia, Poland and Romania, and know people from both Russia and Ukraine. This whole conflict is extremely stressful, I've seen it coming for years and have already acted on that and it pisses me off that we have not done more to deal with Russia when the time was right.

As for Finland and their defense: Finland is armed to teeth, has a very capable military and the Soviets have never really left Finland after World War II, which is the Finnish way of reminding the Soviets that if they invade they run a good chance of becoming a permanent fixture on Finnish soil.

They didn't win but they made it pretty costly, and Finland never forgot that lesson.

>

there is a global agenda behind all this tragic story