A bad day for Vladimir Putin as Sweden and Finland are invited to join NATO – but at what price do they pay? | World News
This is a bad day for Vladimir Putin and one of his strategic goals.
He says he is resisting this war in part because of NATO’s expanding threat.
He now has thousands more NATO troops on their way to countries on his borders, and two neutral countries that were once neutral have upgraded the alliance’s ranks.
Sweden and Finland will now join NATOalarm about what happened to Ukraine at the hands of Russian aggression.
Their applications will be expedited as quickly as possible, which is sure to excite Ukrainians who want to join the union even if they know it’s never likely to happen anytime soon.
And there are questions about the cost to Sweden and Finland and possibly other members of the coalition to overcome Turkish objections to their participation.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan says he got everything he wanted from their accession negotiations.
Most of all the Turks wanted promises from the Swedes and Finns to the Kurds.
The Turks said both countries have agreed to fully cooperate with Turkey on the PKK, the militant group that has been fighting for an independent Kurdish homeland in Turkey since the 1980s.
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However, they said Sweden and Finland had also agreed not to support the YPG, the predominantly Kurdish group that has spearheaded the fight against Islamic State in northern Syria in alliance with the west. Turkey considers them terrorists.
The Turkish side said both countries had agreed on “intelligence sharing in the fight against terrorism and organized crime”.
To what extent will that include intelligence gathering on the Kurds?
There are 100,000 people in the Kurdish community in Sweden, among them supporters of the PKK.
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Turkey wasted no time in requesting the extradition of 33 Kurds from Finland and Sweden calling them terrorist suspects.
The Kurds also fear the deal will be seen by Turkey as a green light to extend attacks on the Kurdish area of Rojava, northern Syria.
The Turkish president recently threatened to launch a new invasion into northern Syria to retake towns held by the YPG.
The US considers this group an important ally. Turkey considers it an extension of the PKK.
