Finland is “very likely” to join NATO after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, its European minister told Sky News.
Titi Tupurainen said that “the people of Finland have already decided” and that the polls show great support for membership in the alliance.
“At this point, I would say it’s high, but no decision has been made yet,” she said.
She said Russia’s “brutal” war in Ukraine was “a wake-up call for all of us”.
Image: Border guards on Finland’s border with Russia in Imatra
“Not only for us Finns, this is about the whole security frontier in Europe,” she said.
This comes after the Prime Ministers of Finland and Sweden, Sanna Marin and Magdalena Anderson, took part in a joint press conference on Wednesday.
Ms Marin said her country, which shares an 810-mile border with Russia, was ready to make a formal decision on NATO membership “within weeks” of a debate in parliament.
Russia is threatening a nuclear escalation over Finland and Sweden’s NATO bid
Moscow has responded by threatening that this will be the end of a nuclear-free Baltic region.
Threatening nuclear escalation, Russian Security Council Deputy Chairman Dmitry Medvedev said: “We can no longer talk about the nuclear-free status of the Baltic Sea – the balance must be restored.”
He also promised “to seriously strengthen the ground forces group and the air defense (s) to deploy significant naval forces in the Gulf of Finland”.
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Image: Swedish Prime Minister Magdalena Anderson (left) with Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin on Wednesday
But Lithuanian Defense Minister Arvidas Anusauskas said this was “nothing new” and Russia already has nuclear weapons in the region – in Russia’s Kaliningrad enclave on the Baltic Sea.
Speaking to Sky News on Friday, Ms Tupurainen said: “Whatever Russia says, we hear it, but we make our own decisions based on our interests and our considerations for the overall situation.
“Each country has the right to take its own security measures.”
The process must be “fast”
Asked how quickly Finland could join NATO, she added: “It depends on NATO member states, including the United Kingdom.
“It needs ratification in every Member State. The intermediate period between leaving the application for membership and actual NATO membership can be really nasty.
“So it’s in everyone’s interest to make the process as fast as possible.”
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Finland gained independence from Russia in 1917 and waged two wars against it during World War II, when it lost part of its territory to Moscow.
Asked about relations with Russia before the war in Ukraine, she said ordinary people would come and go as they wished, there were “cross-border relations” and “cultural exchanges”.
But now she said: “Things have changed radically. We can no longer trust Vladimir Putin’s Russia.”
One of Mr Putin’s main excuses for invading Ukraine was to prevent it from joining NATO.
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