Finland, which shares a 1,300-kilometer (810-mile) border with Russia, and Sweden are considering joining a NATO alliance.  Finland will decide in the coming weeks, Prime Minister Sanna Marin said on Wednesday. 
Dmitry Medvedev, Russia’s vice-president of the Security Council, has said that if Sweden and Finland join NATO, Russia should strengthen its land, naval and air forces in the Baltic Sea.
Medvedev also explicitly posed a nuclear threat, saying there could be no more “nuclear-free” Baltic – where Russia has the Kaliningrad enclave between Poland and Lithuania.
“We can no longer talk about any nuclear-free regime in the Baltic – the balance must be restored,” said Medvedev, who was Russia’s president from 2008 to 2012.
Medvedev said he hoped Finland and Sweden would make sense.  If not, he said, they would have to live with nuclear weapons and supersonic missiles near their homes.
Russia has the world’s largest nuclear warhead arsenal and, along with China and the United States, is one of the world leaders in supersonic missile technology.
Lithuania said the Russian threats were nothing new and that Moscow had developed nuclear weapons in Kaliningrad long before the war in Ukraine.  NATO did not immediately respond to a warning from Russia.
However, the possible accession of Finland and Sweden to NATO – founded in 1949 to provide Western security against the Soviet Union – would be one of the biggest strategic consequences of the war in Ukraine.
Finland gained its independence from Russia in 1917 and fought two wars against it during World War II, during which it lost some territory.  On Thursday, Finland announced a military exercise in Western Finland involving Britain, the United States, Latvia and Estonia.
Sweden has not been at war for 200 years.  Foreign policy has focused on supporting democracy and nuclear disarmament.


KALININGRAT 
Kaliningrad, the former port of Koenigsberg, the capital of East Prussia, is less than 1,400 km from London and Paris and 500 km from Berlin.
Russia said in 2018 that it had deployed Iskander missiles in Kaliningrad, which was captured by the Red Army in April 1945 and ceded to the Soviet Union at the Potsdam Conference.
The Iskander, known as the SS-26 Stone from NATO, is a system of short-range tactical ballistic missiles that can carry nuclear warheads.  Its official range is 500 km, but some Western military sources suspect it could be much larger.
“No sensible person wants higher prices and higher taxes, increased tensions along the border, Iskander, supersonic and nuclear weapons ships literally at gunpoint away from home,” Medvedev said.
“Let us hope that the common sense of our northern neighbors will win.”
While Putin is Russia’s top leader, Medvedev’s comments reflect the Kremlin’s thinking and he is a senior member of the Security Council – one of Putin’s main chambers for strategic decision-making.
Lithuanian Defense Minister Arvydas Anusauskas said Russia had developed nuclear weapons in Kaliningrad even before the war.
“Nuclear weapons have always been kept in Kaliningrad … the international community, the countries of the region, know this very well,” Anusauskas was quoted as saying by the BNS.  “They use it as a threat.”
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on February 24 has killed thousands, displaced millions, and raised fears of a wider conflict between Russia and the United States – by far the world’s two largest nuclear powers.
Putin says a “special military operation” in Ukraine is necessary because the United States was using Ukraine to threaten Russia and Moscow had to defend itself against Russian-speaking persecution.
Ukraine says it is fighting an imperial-style land grab and that Putin’s allegations of genocide are nonsense.  US President Joe Biden says Putin is a war criminal and a dictator.
Putin says the conflict in Ukraine is part of a much wider confrontation with the United States, which he says is trying to impose its hegemony even when its dominance in the world order is waning.


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(Report by Guy Faulconbridge · Edited by Hugh Lawson and Nick Macfie)