The Finnish Foreign Minister Haavisto has told Finnish media that he plans on submitting his country’s NATO application on Wednesday, May 18th. He said:

“From our side, it will be the NATO Ambassador in Brussels who will do it physically, probably on Wednesday. Then if the negotiations start with NATO, it will be handled by a delegation led by the Minister of Foreign Affairs and the Minister of Defense”.

This comes off the heels of Swedish media declaring that Sweden will submit their application on Monday, May 16th. According to them, “Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson will call a governmental meeting late on Monday where the decision on whether to join Nato will be made, after which the country will send in formal documentation immediately.”

The meeting will follow a debate scheduled in Sweden’s Riksdag parliament for 1030 on Monday morning, which will discuss the conclusions of the Swedish government’s ‘security policy analysis group’, which submitted the security assessment to the Swedish government last Friday. The Left and Green parties are unlikely to support the conclusions of the report and possibly the decision to join NATO.

Either way, this upcoming week will be a busy one and most likely a somber one for Russian President Putin who said the goal of invading Ukraine was to curb NATO expansion.