Turkey set to approve Sweden's NATO membership bid after long delay
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https://www.reuters.com/world/turkey-set-approve-swedens-nato-membership-bid-after-long-delay-2024-01-23/?taid=65afebe4d6f23c000137696a
https://www.reuters.com/world/turkey-set-approve-swedens-nato-membership-bid-after-long-delay-2024-01-23/?taid=65afebe4d6f23c000137696a
Good lord, have we learned nothing? At least wait until they've actually voted, they can still find some exotic way to block us.
Edit: We made it!
They seem to have got their act together after they realized they actually could lose their funding as well as their voting rights.
Just some basic saber-rattling to make sure everyone knows they’ve got a voice.
Sweden joining is actually going to be really huge, a bigger blow to Russia's strategic power than anything that could have happened with Ukraine.
The Suwałki Gap is the 65km-long stretch of land in between Belarus and Kaliningrad, which previously was the only NATO-controlled connection between the Baltic states and the rest of Europe. Russia has been using Kaliningrad as a menacing fortress, in the event of war with NATO that gap would become a terrible chokehold that NATO would have had to spend an enormous amount of men and equipment securing. But now that Finland and (soon) Sweden have joined, the Baltic sea has become a NATO-controlled body of water. In one fell swoop:
All of this because Russia decided to invade Ukraine, which was already a semi-ally even after kicking out Yanukovych, to secure access to Sevastopol for their Black Sea fleet. A fleet that they could have supported from other Russian-controlled ports in the Black Sea, and which would have been largely useless in a war with NATO anyway due to Turkey controlling the Bosporus. If Putin had just sighed, swallowed his pride, and made a new deal with Ukraine to keep using Sevastopol, none of this would happen. Instead Russia is basically ruined.