'Mostly this about sending a message to the Russians, specifically to the Russian president'
Visit our website:
http://www.france24.com
Like us on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/FRANCE24.English
Follow us on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/France24_en
Transcript
00:00 Now, the Swedish flag was raised at the NATO headquarters earlier on today as the country
00:06 formally became the alliance's 32nd member.
00:10 Speaking at the launch, its chief, Jens Stoltenberg, said NATO was stronger now than ever before
00:15 and that Vladimir Putin, he said, was failing in Ukraine.
00:20 To tell us a little more, Ketavan Gorgiostani from our foreign desk is with me.
00:24 And Ketavan, what did you make of that language from Stoltenberg?
00:27 You could clearly see that both men were, yes, celebrating this new member, this new
00:32 ally joining the alliance, but mostly this was about sending a message to the Russians,
00:38 specifically to the Russian president.
00:41 And Stoltenberg did talk about this historic day, but mostly he said that you could see
00:48 with Russia and what they did by invading Ukraine about two years ago was that Vladimir
00:56 Putin's goal was to have less NATO and more control over its neighbours and that instead
01:03 what he got was a stronger and a bigger NATO with these two more countries joining, Sweden
01:09 and Finland.
01:11 He also reiterated something that he has said multiple times before, which is that this
01:18 is also a message about who decides who gets to join a NATO, because of course Vladimir
01:25 Putin has long asked and required of NATO not to let anybody else in.
01:32 And Stoltenberg's message was NATO's door will always be open and it is not for Russia
01:37 to decide who gets to join and who doesn't get to join.
01:41 It's up to the allies, the members of NATO.
01:44 And finally, he said that not only is NATO bigger and stronger now, but Ukraine itself
01:50 is closer to a NATO membership than it has ever been before.
01:55 Yes, we're not talking about tomorrow or in the next year, but he said that the question
02:00 was now when Ukraine would join NATO, not if Ukraine would ever join NATO.
02:07 And for the Swedish prime minister, it was also that sort of same messaging towards the
02:12 Russian that you are not succeeding at what you're trying to do.
02:15 You've made us stronger.
02:16 You've made us more united.
02:18 And he did have some warnings for the NATO alliance, talking about the fact that Russia
02:23 will stay a threat for the Euro-Atlantic alliance for the foreseeable future, and that all that
02:30 is happening in Ukraine just has made the alliance more aware of that threat than it
02:36 has ever been before.
02:37 And so it has made it again stronger.