{"id":21894,"date":"2022-05-16T18:21:15","date_gmt":"2022-05-16T18:21:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/?p=21894"},"modified":"2022-05-16T18:21:15","modified_gmt":"2022-05-16T18:21:15","slug":"the-baltic-sea-is-about-to-become-a-nato-lake-facing-russia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/2022\/05\/16\/the-baltic-sea-is-about-to-become-a-nato-lake-facing-russia\/","title":{"rendered":"The Baltic Sea is about to become a Nato lake, facing Russia"},"content":{"rendered":"

Clearly Russia isn\u2019t happy about Finland and Sweden joining Nato.<\/p>\n

But Putin said this dramatic step represents \u201cno direct threat\u201d to Russia, and his latest comments contained some important nuance.<\/p>\n

Only the expansion of Nato military infrastructure, he said, would provoke a response.<\/p>\n

In some ways, the fact that two highly capable military powers have joined the Western alliance changes little on the ground.<\/p>\n

But a quick glance at the map shows that Russia\u2019s Kola Peninsula, bristling with naval bases and missile silos, lies just 100 miles (160km) from the border with Finland.<\/p>\n

And the home of Russia\u2019s Baltic Fleet, Kaliningrad, which is already sandwiched between Nato members Poland and Lithuania, will soon have another Nato neighbour, Sweden, watching it from across the sea.<\/p>\n

The Baltic Sea is about to become a Nato lake.<\/p>\n

Putin realises \u2013 belatedly perhaps \u2013 that there\u2019s nothing he can do to stop the two Nordic countries from joining Nato.<\/p>\n

But he\u2019s warning the alliance not to go further, by placing missiles or creating permanent bases in either country.<\/p>\n

Such moves are unlikely. Sweden and Finland are already well-established Nato partners, with armed forces that are already highly \u201cinteroperable\u201d with their Nato counterparts.<\/p>\n

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\"Russia's<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Clearly Russia isn\u2019t happy about Finland and Sweden joining Nato. But Putin said this dramatic step represents \u201cno direct threat\u201d to Russia, and his latest comments contained some important nuance. Only the expansion of Nato military infrastructure, he said, would provoke a response. In some ways, the fact that two highly capable military powers have […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":21730,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_post_source_name":"","_post_source_url":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[6728,11830,5880,9204,5335,8995,7226,5423,7181,5572,5254,12985,6556,4802,837,71,3457,1378,3954],"class_list":["post-21894","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world-news","tag-alliance","tag-armed-forces","tag-baltic-sea","tag-border","tag-finland","tag-infrastructure","tag-kaliningrad","tag-lies","tag-lithuania","tag-military","tag-missile","tag-missiles","tag-naro","tag-nato","tag-poland","tag-putin","tag-russia","tag-sweden","tag-will"],"blocksy_meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21894","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21894"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21894\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21730"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21894"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21894"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21894"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}