Finland expected to announce bid to join Nato | Ukraine

Officials and diplomats have indicated that Finland will announce its intention to join NATO on Thursday. Sweden could follow shortly thereafter. said, as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine reshapes European security and the Atlantic military alliance.

Five diplomats and officials from NATO told Reuters that the allies of the Nato expect Finland and Sweden will be granted membership within a short time. This would allow for increased troop presence in the Nordic area during the one year ratification period.

As Boris Johnson, the British prime minister, visited both countries to sign security agreements and promised to protect them against Russian threats in the days leading up to their Nato accession.

Norway, Denmark, and the Baltic states, as well as the other Nordic countries, are Nato members. The addition of Finland or Sweden to the region would likely anger Moscow, who considers enlargement of the organization a direct threat its security.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has mentioned this issue as one of the reasons for his actions against Ukraine. However, Ukraine has also expressed an interest in joining the alliance. Moscow has also repeatedly warned Finland and Sweden against joining the alliance, threatening “serious military and political consequences”.

President Sauli Nisto was asked on Wednesday whether Finland would provoke Russia by joining NATO. saidPutin would be the one to blame. “My response would be that you caused this. Look at the mirror,” Niinisto said.

On Thursday European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen warned Russia was the “most direct threat” to the international order because of its “barbaric” war in Ukraine.

Von der Leyen and European Council president Charles Michel are in Japan for talks that have touched on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine but also growing concerns about China’s role in Asia and beyond.

Russia “is today the most direct threat to the world order with the barbaric war against Ukraine, and its worrying pact with China,” she saidAfter talks with Fumio Kishida, the Japanese prime minister.

Ukraine is on the frontlines saidIt had also repelled Russian forces from the east and cut gas flows along a route through Russian territory, raising concerns about an energy crisis in Europe.

Ukraine’s armed forces’ general staff saidIt had captured Pytomnyk on the main highway between Kharkiv and the second-largest Russian city.

Tatyana Pochivalova, a resident from another village near Kharkiv was recaptured in April by Ukrainian forces. She returned to find her house razed to ruins.

“I have not expected anything like this, such aggression, such destruction,” a weeping Pochivalova said. “I came and I kissed the ground, I simply kissed it. My home is empty. Where am I to live, how am I to live?”

This appears to be Ukraine’s fastest advance since the Russian troops were driven out of the capital Kyiv at the beginning April.

If sustained, it could let Ukrainian forces threaten supply lines for Russia’s main attack force, and put rear logistics targets in Russia itself within range of artillery.

However, a senior US military official has warned that neither side can win in the present circumstances and that Russian and Ukrainian forces appear to be settling into a gruelling and deadly stalemate in Ukraine’s east.

Despite an announcement from Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, that Ukrainian counter-offensives around the city of Kharkiv were pushing invading Russian forces back, Ukrainian successes appeared to be confined for now to the far north-eastern and south-western flanks of the 300-mile frontline.

“The Russians aren’t winning, and the Ukrainians aren’t winning, and we’re at a bit of a stalemate here,” said Lt Gen Scott Berrier, director of the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency, who gave evidence on Tuesday alongside Avril Haines, the US national intelligence director, to the Senate armed forces committee.

The assessment was delivered as the Russian military claimed its forces had advanced as far as the border between the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, potentially edging to securing control of the Donbas region despite losing ground around Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city.

These developments occurred in Ukraine said it was shutting down Russian gas flows through territory held by Russian-backed separatists – the first time the conflict has directly disrupted shipments to Europe.

For its part Moscow has imposed sanctions on the owner of the Polish part of the Yamal pipeline that carries Russian gas to Europe, as well as Gazprom’s former German unit, whose subsidiaries service Europe’s gas consumption.

The implications of Russia’s gas purchases for Europe, which consumes more than a third, are not yet clear. Berlin saidIt was reviewing the announcement. A spokesperson for the economy ministry said the German government was “taking the necessary precautions and preparing for various scenarios”.

Kyiv is occupying territory in the southern Ukraine where Russia has seized large swathes of it. saidMoscow plans to fakely hold a referendum on independence or annexes to cement its control.

Russian forces continue to bombard the Azovstal steelworks, which is the last bastion of Ukrainian defenders within a city, in the southern port Mariupol.

“If there is hell on earth, it is there,” wrote Petro Andryushchenko, an aide to the Mariupol mayor, Vadym Boichenko, who has left the city.

According to Ukraine, it is possible that Mariupol has seen the deaths of tens of thousands. Ukrainian authorities say between 150,000 and 170,000 of the city’s 400,000 residents are still living there amid the Russian-occupied ruins.

With Reuters