Sweden officially joined NATO on Thursday after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine spurred it to rethink its defense policy and abandon its long held position of neutrality.
Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson formally handed over accession documents to the US State Department in Washington, DC, the final step of a months-long process to gain the approval of all members to allow his country to become the alliance’s 32nd member.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken received the documents, which he said were the product of “nearly two years of tireless diplomacy” by NATO members. The documents are put into a vault at the State Department, which serves as the treaty depositary for NATO.
Stockholm dropped years of military non-alignment when it applied for NATO membership alongside Finland in the wake of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
“We’ll closely monitor what Sweden does in the aggressive military bloc, how it will implement its membership in practice,” Russia’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said at a weekly press briefing.
She said Moscow’s “military and technical” retaliation would depend on the types of NATO weapons and units Sweden deploys, as well as the types of drills and strategies it adopts as a member of the military alliance.
“Based on that, we’ll develop our response policy, as well as military and technical steps, to stop the threats to Russia’s national security,” Zakharova added.
Her statement echoes Russia’s Embassy in Stockholm, which warned earlier Tuesday that Moscow’s response was contingent on the “conditions and scale of Sweden’s integration into NATO, including the possible deployment of NATO units, strike systems and weapons.”
Last year, Russia’s ambassador in Stockholm said that NATO’s new members would become “a legitimate target for Russian retaliatory measures.”
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