Finland’s “historic” announcement to apply for membership of the Atlantic Alliance has yet to be ratified in Parliament, but it has provoked the ire of Moscow, which is threatening retaliation.
After the Finnish turn, Sweden is expected to follow the same path. The ruling Swedish Social Democratic Party on Sunday approved the bid for the US-led Military Alliance. A joint application with Finland is “in the best interest of Sweden”, said Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson.
The Kremlin insists that the Nordic nations have nothing to fear, but has stopped supplying electricity to Finland, with which it shares a 1,300-kilometre border.
Most NATO members support the entry of both nations, although Turkey accuses them of harboring Kurdish extremists.
While the applications are processed, which can take months, the alliance will offer both countries provisional security guarantees.
The Helsinki and Stockholm decision is a direct consequence of the Russian invasion against Ukraine, where Moscow’s troops have suffered heavy military losses, according to Western intelligence services.
“Ukraine can win” the war against Russia, said the secretary general of the alliance, Jens Stoltenberg, at an informal meeting of the group’s foreign ministers in Berlin.
German diplomat Annalena Baerbock said NATO members were ready to offer military aid to Ukraine “as long as it takes” so that Ukraine can ensure “the self-defense of its country”.
“LOOSE MOMENTUM”
On the ground, four missiles damaged military infrastructure in Lviv, near the Polish border, according to regional governor Maksym Kozytsky.
Authorities reported no casualties and according to the Ukrainian military, two cruise missiles were destroyed. Lviv had last been hit on May 3.
But Russia, which launched the invasion of Ukraine on February 24, has concentrated its offensive in the east in recent weeks, after withdrawing from the kyiv area and the north.
The Russian defense minister claims to have carried out “high-precision” missile attacks on four ammunition depots in Donetsk, in the east.
The airstrikes also destroyed two missile launch systems and a radar, while 15 Ukrainian drones were killed around Donetsk and Lugansk, it added.
However, according to Westerners, the Russian advance is losing strength. UK defense chiefs say Russia’s offensive in the Donbas region has “lost momentum”.
Demoralized Russian troops have made no substantive progress and Moscow’s battle plan is “significantly behind schedule,” the UK defense intelligence service said.
“Under current conditions, it is unlikely that Russia will drastically accelerate its rate of advance in the next 30 days,” the intelligence service said, assuring that Moscow “probably” suffered losses of a third of its troops.
Both Ukraine and Russia regularly publish the number of deaths on the enemy side, but the actual number of victims is unknown.
kyiv assures that its troops have killed almost 20,000 Russian soldiers. Moscow, on the other hand, claimed on March 25 that its forces had killed at least 14,000 Ukrainian soldiers.
However, both figures are suspected to be inflated and could not be verified by AFP or by independent observers.
EASTERN UKRAINE
Western leaders envision a protracted war of attrition that will stretch into next year.
But the Ukrainian authorities are more optimistic and predict a “turning point” in August.
According to the governor of the eastern Luhansk region, Sergei Gaidai, Russia attempted to cross the Donets River to surround the city of Severodonetsk, but Ukrainian forces managed to repel the advance.
Two civilians were killed in that town in a night bombardment, Gaidai said.
In Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest city, Russian troops are withdrawing as a result of a counter-offensive, according to local authorities.
Vadim Denisenko, an adviser at the Interior Ministry, told Ukrainian television that kyiv’s troops deployed in the Kharkov region had almost reached the Russian border.
Since the beginning of the invasion, Russian victories have been limited to the southern city of Kherson and the almost total conquest of Mariupol (southeast), on the shores of the Sea of Azov.
Some 600 fighters are still holding out in the tunnels of the Azovstal steelworks and their relatives on Saturday launched an appeal for help to Chinese President Xi Jinping to evacuate them.
Earlier this month, the UN and the Red Cross helped evacuate civilians from this plant, where they had taken refuge from constant Russian bombardment.
