Sweden on Thursday became the 32nd member of NATO, turning the page on two centuries of non-alignment and capping two years of diplomacy after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Days after Hungary followed key holdout Turkey and became the last NATO member to sign off, Sweden ceremonially handed over accession documents to the US.
Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson attended as a guest at the state of the union address of US President Joe Biden in Washington.
Photo: AFP
“Mr Prime Minister, welcome to NATO, the strongest military alliance the world has ever seen,” Biden said as he recognized Kristersson, who sat in the gallery next to first lady Jill Biden.
Biden urged the US House of Representatives to approve billions of dollars in military aid to Ukraine, saying that “I will not bow down” to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“If anybody in this room thinks Putin will stop at Ukraine, I assure you he will not,” Biden said.
Kristersson, at an accession ceremony at the US Department of State, called joining NATO “a major step, but at the same time, a very natural step.”
“It’s a victory for freedom today. Sweden has made a free, democratic, sovereign and united choice to join NATO,” he said.
He later delivered a televised address to the nation from Washington, saying: “We are a small country, but we understand more than most the importance of the greater world beyond our borders.”
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that few would have expected Sweden as well as Finland to join NATO before Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
There is “no clearer example than today of the strategic debacle that Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has become for Russia,” Blinken said.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy also hailed Sweden’s membership, saying: “One more country in Europe has become more protected from Russian evil.”
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