Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, the deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, said on Thursday that Russia would step up all its forces in the region if the two Nordic countries joined the US-led alliance. Finland and Sweden are debating whether to abandon decades of military engagement and join NATO, with leaders from the two Nordic countries saying Russia’s attack on Ukraine had changed Europe’s “entire security landscape”. Joining the alliance would more than double Russia’s land border with NATO members, Medvedev said. “Of course, we need to strengthen these borders,” he said. Map of NATO countries with color coding by year of accession Medvedev, a close ally of President Vladimir Putin, has explicitly posed a nuclear threat, saying that Finland and Sweden’s accession to NATO would mean “no more nuclear-free regime in the Baltic to be restored “. Russia “had not taken such measures and was not going to take them,” he said. “But if our hand is forced, well; note that it was not us who suggested it.” Russia borders the Baltic states of Estonia and Latvia, and the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad is located between Poland and Lithuania. Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin said Wednesday that Finland, which shares a 1,300-kilometer (810-mile) border with Russia, is likely to decide on a NATO application “in a matter of weeks”, while Sweden is its counterpart. , Magdalena Andersson, said there. it made no sense to delay the decision. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Russian forces, who had withdrawn from northern Ukraine after failing to occupy the capital, were “increasing their activities on the southern and eastern fronts, trying to avenge their defeats”. Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Malyar said on Thursday that Russia was mobilizing troops along the Russian-Ukrainian border in Belarus and in the breakaway region of Transnistria-Moldova, with the eastern cities of Kharkiv, Donetsk and Zaporizhia on fire. The United States has unveiled a new package of military aid, including armored personnel carriers and helicopters, saying it was seeking to provide Ukraine with weapons that would give it “more range and distance” before the impending attack. Moscow said on Thursday that its Black Sea flagship, Moskva, had been “severely damaged” by an explosion that, according to the Ministry of Defense, was caused by ammunition fired “as a result of a fire”. Ukraine said the cruiser was hit by a rocket. Although the Ministry of Defense later said the fire had been extinguished, the news of the loss overshadowed Russian claims of progress in the devastated southern port city of Mariupol, which was largely destroyed by a six-week savage bombardment by local The mayor said he had killed more than 21,000 people. Russia claimed on Wednesday that more than 1,000 Ukrainian Marines had surrendered to the city, adding later that the port was under its full control. However, Vadim Denishenko, an adviser to Ukraine’s interior minister, said on Thursday that the battle for the port “is still going on today”. Mariupol is a key target in pushing Moscow to secure a land corridor between the self-proclaimed republics of Donetsk and Luhansk in Donbas and Crimea, which Russia occupied and annexed in 2014, and its capture will allow its military planners. to redistribute vital resources farther. East. Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said nine humanitarian corridors had been agreed to evacuate civilians, including by private car, from Mariupol, Berdiansk, Tokmak and Enerhodar on Thursday, while others in Luhansk were expected to open if Russian forces stop bombing. In the terror of the suburbs of Ukraine: “I have nothing else” – video Russia’s withdrawal from Kyiv has led to the discovery of a large number of seemingly slaughtered civilians, drawing international condemnation and calls for a war crimes investigation. The Hague-based International Criminal Court, which deals with human rights abuses, told reporters that Ukraine had become a “crime scene”. ICC Attorney General Karim Khan said during a visit to Bhutan, where officials said more than 400 civilians had been killed: “We are here because we have good reason to believe that crimes are being committed within the jurisdiction of the court.” Moscow has dismissed all allegations of atrocities, which Putin has dismissed as “fake.” The Russian invasion has so far driven more than 10 million Ukrainians from their homes, more than 4.6 million of whom have fled abroad. Western sanctions have triggered Russia’s worst economic crisis since the fall of the Soviet Union, analysts say. More than 600 western companies have withdrawn from the country.
