Russia said on Friday it saw Finland’s move to lift restrictions on hosting nuclear weapons as a potential threat and vowed to respond if Helsinki followed through with the plan.
A Russia neighbor and NATO member since 2023, Finland said on Thursday it planned to lift restrictions prohibiting nuclear weapons on its soil, in order to bring the country in line with the military alliance’s deterrence policy.
“By deploying nuclear weapons on its territory, Finland is beginning to threaten us,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told journalists, including from AFP.
“If Finland threatens us, we will take appropriate measures.”
Finland dropped decades of military non-alignment to join NATO in April 2023, launching the membership bid after Russia’s invasion of Helsinki’s ally, Ukraine, in 2022.
“The government proposal would make it possible in future to bring a nuclear weapon into Finland or to transport, deliver or possess one in Finland if it is connected to the military defence of Finland,” Finnish Defence Minister Antti Hakkanen said on Thursday.
Hakkanen said Finland’s and Europe’s security environment had “fundamentally and significantly changed and deteriorated” following Russia’s full-scale offensive in Ukraine.
Finland has in the past years accused Moscow of “hybrid warfare” in orchestrating a surge of migrants at their shared 1,340-kilometre (830-mile) border — a charge the Kremlin denied.
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