Ukraine’s NATO membership would have prevented war – PM of Finland

Sanna Marin, the Prime Minister of Finland, stated that if Ukraine was a NATO member state, Russia would not have invaded it.

Source: Marin at the World Economic Forum in Davos, as reported by European Pravda with reference to the Politico media outlet

"We can look down the history and ask ourselves a question, should Ukraine already be a member of NATO?", she stated, adding that "then there wouldn’t be a war in Ukraine and this is why Finland, Sweden are also ratifying NATO membership."

She added that in 2014, when Russia attacked Crimea, Europe and its allies should have acted more robustly. "We need to learn from this day," Marin said.

"We want to become a member of NATO because we don’t ever again want war in Finland," she said, adding that she hoped the ratification process for Sweden and Finland would go "as fast as possible."

Hungary and Turkey still need to ratify the joint NATO bid of Sweden and Finland.

While Budapest has said it would support the military bloc’s latest expansion and sign off on it early this year, Ankara has yet to follow suit.

"There shouldn’t be any problems and I have also personally talked with [Turkish] President [Recep Tayyip] Erdoğan and he said what he has said also in public, that there isn’t that big of issues with Finland, maybe some with Sweden, but for our perspective, it’s very important that Finland and Sweden are going to NATO together because we are sharing the same security," Marin said.

She added that the Russian war against Ukraine is both "Putin’s war" and "Russia’s war."

At the beginning of the year, Mikko Savola, the Minister of Defence of Finland, reported that Finland was preparing the 12th military aid package for Ukraine.

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