Niinistö expects the member states to find a consensus on Ukraine’s closer relationship with NATO as well. Finland will go to its first actual NATO summit with a familiar agenda, the president tells STT.
President Sauli Niinistö is optimistic about the progress of Sweden’s NATO membership at the NATO Summit in Vilnius.
In an interview with STT, he emphasizes that the solution once again depends on the Turkish president About Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. This is meeting the Prime Minister of Sweden by Ulf Kristersson In Vilnius already on the eve of the summit on Monday.
“Hopefully, the same chain as in the case of Finland will be realized, that he [Erdoğan] expresses his positive opinion, after which the matter moves forward quite quickly,” Niinistö said to STT in a telephone interview on Friday.
He has not noticed any signs that Finland’s faster membership was used as some kind of example to put pressure on Sweden.
On the other hand, Turkey’s communication was from the beginning in the direction that Finland was found to have fewer problems than Sweden from Turkey’s point of view, Niinistö reminds.
In addition to Turkey, Hungary has not yet ratified Sweden’s membership. Finland’s membership was quickly ratified by Hungary after Turkey seemed to be doing the same.
Finland the political leadership has emphasized at every turn that Sweden’s accession to NATO is Finland’s primary goal as a new member country.
However, Niinistö reminds that, despite this, the main topic of the Vilnius summit is the defense union’s relationship with Ukraine.
President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyi has hoped for a clearer promise from NATO about the country’s admission to NATO membership. However, the member states have been partly on different lines as to how far Ukraine’s wishes should go in being fulfilled.
Niinistö estimates that all NATO countries take Ukraine’s needs and views seriously and do not want to deliberately lower the bar. Still, he thinks that the wording of the joint statement will have to be refined to the last detail.
“There are now some elements that I would believe will move forward. Now we are hopeful that we will find a consensus that will at least reasonably meet Ukraine’s wishes,” Niinistö formulates.
According to the president, NATO’s lack of unity would send the wrong message to Russia.
“It wouldn’t be very good after these current year’s membership discussions,” he adds.
To Finland NATO’s summit is now the first as a full member. Will the 31st member country of the defense alliance keep a high or low profile in Vilnius?
“Finland needs to keep an objective profile. It has indeed been maintained in the past at NATO meetings when it has been there. Not by any means over- but not under-emphasized either,” Niinistö states.
According to him, no decisions are expected from the meeting itself, for example, about Finland’s participation in NATO’s peacetime operations, such as the multinational forces on the alliance’s eastern side or the Baltic air surveillance.
“But many things can come up in informal discussions,” Niinistö adds.
At the summit, the implementation of the decisions already made in the past is on display, for example, on NATO’s defense plans, leadership and force structure, and the enhancement of the arms industry. According to Niinistö, Finland is involved in all of these.
In the one announced earlier this week NATO Poll -research project’s survey, more than four out of five Finns supported NATO membership. An equal majority was also ready to send Finnish troops to defend another NATO country.
Niinistö considers the number describing readiness to support “really hard”. He thinks that the Finns’ traditional attitude of understanding the importance of national defense is now also reflected more widely.
“There [valmiudessa osallistua Nato-liittolaisten puolustukseen] probably have the same background to some extent. Let’s see the union as a whole, as a common whole,” he reflects.
Hardly the summit in Vilnius has come to an end, when Niinistö is already hosting the president of the United States Joe Biden and the meeting of the leaders of the Nordic countries in Helsinki next Thursday.
According to him, the original idea of the visit is specifically to continue and develop the cooperation between the United States and the Nordic countries, not so much Biden’s visit to the newest NATO member country.
“None of us had any information about it at that point, but about this [vierailusta] we agreed,” says Niinistö.
According to Niinistö, the US president’s visit to the longest land border between NATO and Russia is not a separate communication towards Russia either.
“If they are reading something like that, then it is their reading. Of course there [Venäjällä] the visit will certainly be noted, US presidents don’t visit European countries that terribly often”, adds Niinistö.
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