finland will become the 31st member of nato later on tuesday. the application to join the western military alliance was prompted by the invasion of ukraine by russia, with which finland shares a long border. our diplomatic correspondent, paul adams, has this story. finland only said it wanted to join nato last year. this afternoon, its flag will be raised at the headquarters in brussels, the quickest accession process in nato s recent history. president putin went to war against ukraine with a declared aim to get less nato. he wanted nato to remove our forces, our structures, from all allies that havejoined after 1997, meaning all allies in central and eastern europe. and he wanted nato to make it absolutely clear that nato s door was closed for any new membership. he s getting the exact opposite. he s getting more nato presence in the eastern part of the alliance, and he s getting two new members, with finland and sweden. finland s long frontier with russia, the scene of fig
again and again. we have also made it clear nuclear war can not be won and should never be fought and nato remains a nuclear alliance and that is part of essential deterrence and defence and may closely monitor what russia does. and so far we have not seen any changes in the russian nuclear posturing, that requires any changes in our posture but we remain vigilant, we monitor closely what they do and we will take the necessary steps to always ensure we have credible deterrence for all allies and again, this is not about provoking conflict, it is about preserving peace, preventing misunderstanding and miscalculations in moscow about our readiness to protect all allies because together nato allies represent 50% of the world nuclear might and so long as