Finland will seek NATO membership immediately
Warning: hot take.<p>While it is unlikely that Putin would care a bit about Sweden, this is a huge gamble on Finland&#x27;s side. HUGE.<p>This can go in one of the two directions: either Putin dislikes but somehow swallows it (the way he did with Baltic states in 2004), or he can go about preemptively wrecking Finland (the way he did with Georgia and Ukraine in 2008 and 2014 respectively).<p>Considering Russia was very negative on a prospect of having NATO some 450 km from Moscow, the prospect of having them 150 km from St. Petersburg might aggravate Putin even more. And St. Petersburg is not just another Russian city — it&#x27;s Putin&#x27;s home city.<p>Starting with Mannerheim, Finland had a wise policy for the last 70 years, where they largely refrained from taking sides on the USSR&#x2F;West thingy, and the Soviets let them be. Joining NATO is a complete reversal of that policy, and it is an extremely dangerous gamble at an extremely dangerous time.