Warns NATO If Sweden And Finland Join Alliance, Russia Is Ready To Deploy Nuclear Weapons

9K720 Iskander-M ballistic missile. (Wikimedia Commons/Vitaly V. Kuzmin)

JAKARTA - A top official and ally of President Vladimir Putin warned the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), if Sweden and Finland join the alliance, Russia will have to increase its defense in the region, including by deploying nuclear weapons.

Finland, which shares a 1,300 km (810 mi) border with Russia, and Sweden are considering joining the NATO alliance. Finland will make a decision in the next few weeks, Prime Minister Sanna Marin said on Wednesday.

Dmitry Medvedev, deputy chairman of the Russian Security Council, said if Sweden and Finland joined NATO, Russia would have to strengthen its land, navy and air forces in the Baltic Sea.

Medvedev also explicitly raised the nuclear threat by saying there would be no more talk of a 'nuclear-free' Baltic, where Russia has the Kaliningrad exclave sandwiched between Poland and Lithuania.

"There is no more talk of a nuclear-free status for the Baltics, the balance must be restored," said Medvedev, Russia's president from 2008 to 2012, as reported by Reuters April 14.

Russian President Vladimir Putin with Dmitry Medvedev. (Wikimedia Commons/Government.ru)

"Until today, Russia has not taken such action and will not do so. If our hands are forced well, pay attention, we are not the ones proposing this," he stressed.

The possible entry of Finland and Sweden into NATO, which was established in 1949 to provide the West with collective security against the Soviet Union, would be one of the greatest European strategic consequences of the war in Ukraine.

It is known, Kaliningrad was very important in the northern European theater. Formerly the Prussian port of Koenigsberg, the capital of East Prussia, it is located less than 1400 km from London and Paris and 500 km from Berlin.

Russia said in 2018 it had deployed Iskander missiles to Kaliningrad, which was occupied by the Red Army in April 1945, and handed over to the Soviet Union at the Potsdam conference.

The Iskander, known as the SS-26 Stone by NATO, is a short-range tactical ballistic missile system that can carry both conventional and nuclear warheads.

Its official range is 500 km however, some Western military sources suspect the range may be much greater.

"No sane person wants higher prices and higher taxes, heightened tensions along the border, Iskander, hypersonic and nuclear-armed ships that are literally a considerable distance from their own homes," Medvedev said.

"Let's hope that the common sense of our northern neighbor will prevail," hopes Medvedev.

Russia's February 24 invasion of Ukraine has killed thousands, displaced millions and raised fears of a wider confrontation between Russia and the United States, the two largest nuclear powers in the world today.