Putin: Sweden and Finland's candidacy for NATO membership does not threaten Russia, but it will push it to respond

Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Monday that Finland and Sweden's accession to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) would not pose a "threat" in itself, but that Moscow would respond to military deployments.

"The expansion of NATO to include Finland and Sweden does not pose a direct threat to us... But the expansion of military infrastructure in the territories of these countries will certainly push us to respond," Putin said during a televised summit of the Collective Security Treaty Organization.

The Moscow-led Collective Security Treaty Organization is a military alliance of six former Soviet states: Russia, Belarus, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.

"This is a completely false problem, because it is in the interest of the foreign policy of the United States," Putin said, adding that NATO has become an "instrument of the foreign policy of one country."

"All of this is exacerbating the already difficult international security environment," he added.

Finland and Sweden are poised to abandon decades of military non-alignment to join NATO amid fears of Russian aggression after Moscow invaded Ukraine on February 24.

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