Finland officially became NATO's 31st member after the country's foreign minister signed the accession document and handed it over to United States Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

The signature was the last step of the procedure and was signed in Brussels.

With this, the physical border of Russia with countries of the Alliance is doubled - only the Finnish-Russian border is 1300 km long. From that moment on, an attack on Finland would be, according to the famous art. 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty, an attack on all member countries.

The risks associated with Russia's war in Ukraine were one of the reasons for turning public opinion against accession. However, both Finland and Sweden experienced this shift in attitudes and applied to join the alliance. Turkey blocked both, but then reached a compromise with Helsinki and approved ratification, pending Stockholm's compliance with its demands.

Hours ago, the Kremlin reiterated again that it will not leave the accession of its neighbor without consequences, because NATO used the territory of Finland to deploy military infrastructure near Russia's borders.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said Russian President Vladimir Putin was the man behind the alliance's expansion. He aimed "to get less NATO ... he is getting the exact opposite," Stoltenberg said.

"Maybe that's the only thing we have to thank Putin for," Blinken said.

Today's ceremony coincided with the 74th anniversary of the founding of the defense alliance.

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