“This will be a historic day for NATO tomorrow,” the secretary general said characteristically, Jens Stoltenberg, reaffirming that Finland’s “entry” as the 31st member of the North Atlantic Alliance will be formally ratified during tomorrow’s meeting of its member states’ foreign ministers.

The hoisting of the Finnish flag at the Organization’s headquarters will take place, according to him, at 15:30 local time and will even take place on NATO’s “birthday”, as tomorrow marks 74 years since the signing of its founding.

During a press conference he gave on the eve of tomorrow’s meeting, the NATO Secretary General, as expected, received a flurry of questions about Sweden, which is still in the “corridors” of the alliance, about Turkey’s attitude, and also about what will happen. further with Ukraine.

“Sweden is not alone”

In an obvious attempt to “gild the pill” in Sweden, which, although it started the accession process last year together with neighboring Finland, remains in the NATO “corridors” because of Turkey, G. Stoltenberg said that “Sweden is not alone”, while he assured that in the hypothetical case of an attack on her “NATO will respond.”

At the same time, the NATO Secretary General, carefully avoiding an answer about the status of the relevant negotiations with Turkey, pointed out that Stockholm has fully complied with the conditions arising from the tripartite agreement signed last year with Ankara and Helsinki. Summit in Madrid.

According to him, it is now necessary to “reactivate the process” between Turkey and Sweden in order to make progress, while he repeated several times that it is also a priority for him to join the Scandinavian country “as soon as possible”. as far as possible” and how “it will work in this direction”.

He also stressed that “Sweden is now in a better position and more secure” with the entry of a neighboring country into NATO. Continuing his well-known equidistant policy with Turkey, Stoltenberg said that Ankara had “legitimate concerns” regarding the fight against terrorism and that it was in the interests of Stockholm to help in this direction, although he acknowledged that the Swedish government had already passed the necessary legislation, which even allows him to exchange sensitive information with his Turkish counterpart about Kurdish separatists in his country.

“Ukraine’s victory is a priority”

Although Mr. Stoltenberg emphasized NATO’s basic principle of “open doors”, in the case of Ukraine, he once again ruled out the possibility of its entry into the Alliance.

According to the NATO Secretary General, the priority is “the predominance of Ukraine as a sovereign and free nation”, while he stressed the continuation of negotiations with the Ukrainian side in order to gradually make Ukraine’s “transition” also to the level of military equipment, as well as strategies “from the post-Soviet period to NATO standards and related doctrines”, while paying great attention to the fight against corruption and the development of a more structured partnership between Kiev and the North Atlantic Alliance.

After all, as he noted, this will be the main topic of tomorrow’s meeting of the NATO Special Committee with Ukraine, where the Ukrainian side will be represented by its Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba. In tomorrow’s discussion, in addition, the foreign ministers will consider the direction of further assistance to Ukraine, mainly, however, auxiliary (non-lethal) and not so much military equipment, and G. Stoltenberg recalled that in relation to the latter, 65 billion dollars have already been given to Kiev.

According to the head of NATO, Russia achieved the exact opposite of its goals by inviting new members to the Alliance, which was unthinkable before its invasion of Ukraine. Finland, he mentioned, is already ready to fully join the military structure of NATO, saying that its military force has already received appropriate training, since the corresponding training began in the summer, and Helsinki will strengthen the alliance with more than 50 naval forces. 35 fighters.

Tomorrow’s foreign ministers’ meeting will also discuss increasing defense spending so that all NATO member countries reach 2% of their GDP, with G. Stoltenberg once again mentioning that this percentage is a “starting point”. “.

On Wednesday there will be a meeting with the so-called Asian partners (South Zealand, Australia, Japan, South Korea), the main topic of which will be China. It should be noted that at last year’s summit in Madrid, NATO allies described China as a threat for the first time.

Despite the fact that he did not receive relevant questions, the first discussion of the replacement of the governor is expected tomorrow. NATO, whose mandate has already been renewed once.

At the upcoming summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, July 11-12, the heads of state will have to agree on who will be his successor.