NATO launches Sweden, Finland membership process

NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg declares it a ‘historic day’ after the protocols were signed launching the ratification process.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg (C) embraces Finnish Foreign Minister Pekka Haavisto (L) and Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs Ann Linde after the signing of the accession protocols. Picture: AFP.

Russian artillery pounded Sloviansk, one of Ukraine’s last lines of defence to protect the remaining Kyiv-held strongholds in eastern Ukraine, while NATO overnight advanced plans to add Sweden and Finland to the alliance.

Sloviansk mayor Vadim Lyakh reported “massive shelling” of the city and said the central market was on fire.

Russian troops’ advance toward the Donbas cities of Sloviansk and Kramatorsk in the Donetsk region, the last main cities in the region still under Ukrainian control, follows months of slow Russian gains in the region.

Moscow’s forces launched artillery attacks to take Dolyna, about 16km north of Sloviansk, but were held back by Ukrainian forces, the Ukrainian General Staff of the Armed Forces said. A battalion commander said Ukrainian forces inflicted equipment and personnel losses using newly acquired US systems together with Soviet-era artillery.

Since Russian troops gained control over eastern Ukraine’s Luhansk region in recent days, Moscow has been looking to boost its gains in the more populous province of Donetsk. Donetsk and Luhansk collectively form the Donbas region. In 2014, pro-Russian separatists backed by Moscow broke away from Ukraine to create Kremlin-controlled statelets in the two Donbas regions. Russia is looking to push its control to the administrative boundaries of the provinces.

Russia’s aggression in Ukraine has largely united the West and bolstered NATO. Finland and Sweden on Tuesday became official invitees to join the military alliance after ambassadors of the 30 current members approved their accession protocols. Within hours of the NATO announcement, Canada, Denmark and Norway said they had ratified the two countries’s accession.

The formality follows a political agreement among members’ leaders to invite the duo last week at NATO’s annual summit in Madrid. NATO’s political agreement itself followed a three-way deal struck last Tuesday among Turkey, Sweden and Finland about the two countries’ accession after objections regarding their membership from Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Mr Erdogan had said the two countries — particularly Sweden — hadn’t sufficiently addressed Turkish concerns about Kurdish refugess he called terrorists.

As invitees, the two countries can participate in almost all NATO meetings except nuclear planning sessions and some intelligence briefings. They also don’t benefit from the alliance’s mutual defence pact, which states that an attack on one member represents an attack on all, until their membership process is fully completed.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has said Moscow will wait to see what new threats Finland and Sweden’s NATO membership will create for Russia. Nikolai Patrushev, head of Russia’s security council and one of Mr Putin’s most trusted advisers, on Tuesday accused the Atlantic security bloc of aggravating tensions.

“NATO’s military infrastructure is closing in on our borders and actively boosting military might on its eastern flank,” Mr Patrushev told the TASS news agency. He added that the actions were “leading to an escalation of tensions and the destabilisation of European security”. Individual NATO states, with the US at the fore, have been pouring weapons into Ukraine to fight Russia.

Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu accused the West of prolonging the conflict with its large scale weapons deliveries, which have amounted to 25,000 tonnes of cargo since the start of the war on February 24.

Russia has deployed various units and brigades to the fight in Donbas, and the capture of Lysychansk, the last city to fall to the Russians in Luhansk, has shown developing capabilities among Russian forces to co-ordinate on the battlefield, said the UK Ministry of Defence. “Unlike in previous phases of the war, Russia has probably achieved reasonably effective co-ordination between at least two groupings of forces,” the ministry said. The Russian military’s central grouping is under the command of Gen. Colonel Alexander Lapin and the southern grouping was likely under recently appointed Gen. Sergei Surovikin, the ministry said.

Ukrainian forces have lost two large cities in Luhansk province in recent weeks, but the MoD said it expected Ukrainian defences to prove more effective as the war moved to the remaining cities of Sloviansk and Kramatorsk.

The Wall Street Journal