NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg sent a tongue-in-cheek message to Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday, saying the war he launched against Ukraine has had the exact opposite effect than expected, CNBC reports.

“[Putin] he went to war because he wanted NATO less. It gets more NATO,” Stoltenberg said Tuesday at the opening of a NATO summit in Vilnius, after Turkey dropped its objections to Sweden joining the military alliance a day earlier.

Hungary, for its part, announced on Tuesday that it would unblock the accession ratification process in parliament in Budapest after Turkey’s objections were lifted.

“Moscow, President Putin, does not have a veto on NATO expansion,” Jens Stoltenberg also said, referring to security “guarantees” demanded by Moscow in December 2021, which include an end to NATO’s eastward expansion and the withdrawal of the alliance’s troops from all countries that were part of the communist bloc in the past, including Poland and Romania.

“Completing the ratification of Sweden’s accession to NATO will be a historic step for the security of all NATO allies in these critical times. This makes all of us stronger and safer,” added Jens Stoltenberg at the summit in the Lithuanian capital.

Both Sweden and its northern neighbor Finland abandoned their historic neutrality and formally asked to join NATO last May in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The two northern countries signed accession protocols on July 5, 2022, but their acceptance into the alliance was delayed due to opposition from Turkey and Hungary.

Finland was finally accepted into the North Atlantic Alliance at the beginning of April this year, and the ratification of Sweden’s accession is now a formality.

What Jens Stoltenberg said about the prospect of Ukraine joining NATO

In an interview with CNBC during the summit, the head of NATO said that the alliance would send a “clear, positive message” about the possibility of Ukraine being welcomed among member states.

“I expect that the allies will agree that it is clear that we need to bring Ukraine closer to NATO,” he added.

Responding to a question about the possibility of providing security guarantees to Kyiv, an idea put forward by several Western offices, Stoltenberg replied that “the most urgent task is for Ukraine to remain a sovereign and independent state.”

The secretary general of the alliance also mentioned the NATO summit held in Bucharest in 2008, when Germany and France opposed the start of the accession process of Ukraine and Georgia.

“Ukraine has come a long way since we made this decision in 2008,” he said, adding that “Ukraine is now much closer to NATO.”

“That’s why I think it’s time for it to be reflected in NATO’s decisions,” Jens Stoltenberg emphasized.

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