Russia would not have invaded Ukraine had it been a member of NATO, Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin said Tuesday, adding that was the primary motivation for her country’s application to join the military alliance.
Marin said she was “sure” that Vladimir Putin would not have launched the invasion had Kyiv already been a member. “We can look down the history and ask ourselves the question, should Ukraine already be a member of NATO?” she told the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland, adding that “then there wouldn’t be a war in Ukraine and this is why also Finland, Sweden is ratifying a 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 told the gathering of high-level politicians and business people in the Swiss Alps.
“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.