Russian President, Vladimir Putin, who has repeatedly cited the post-Soviet enlargement of the Nato alliance eastwards toward Russia’s borders as a reason for the conflict of Ukraine made an unusually calm response to Finland and Sweden’s bids to join Nato, the biggest strategic consequence of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to date. Reuters reports that Putin, though, laced his newly found tranquillity on Nato with a warning that the expansion of military equipment into the territory would provoke a response. “What that (response) will be – we will see what threats are created for us,” Putin told the leaders of the Collective Security Treaty Organisation, which includes Belarus, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.
