hello, you re with bbc news, live from london. a historic day as finland is to become the thirty first member of nato a decision prompted by russia s invasion of ukraine. former us president donald trump is in new york to face criminal charges in court. tiktok is fined over £12 million forfailing to protect the privacy of children in the uk. hello, i m maryam moshiri. finland will become the 31st member of nato in a ceremony in brussels in the next hour. the application to join the western military alliance was prompted
including the us, the uk, canada and france. the organisation s original goal was to challenge russian expansion in europe after world war two. it currently has 30 members, who agree to help one another if they come under attack. many of these countries are in europe, the original nato members were in western europe, though since 1997, 1a eastern european nations those appearing in pink have taken the decision tojoin the alliance. russia is demanding no more eastward expansion and it has opposed ukraine s request to join the alliance. finland applied to join the military bloc last year, along with its neighbour sweden. finland s membership is one of the most important moments in nato s recent history given the current war in ukraine and the fact finland is a country with a long land border with russia. let s take you to helsinki with sarkka iro, postdoctoralfellow
by russia s invasion of ukraine. in response, moscow says the finland nato alliance increases the risk of conflict and that it will strengthen its military presence in the region. the head of the military alliance, jens stoltenberg, is calling finland s accession a historic moment. here s what he said earlier. in a few hours we will welcome finland as the slst member of our alliance. this will make finland safer and nato stronger. on this very day in 1949 the washington treaty, nato s founding treaty, was signed in washington, and it s hard to imagine a better way of celebrating our anniversary than to have finland becoming a full member of the alliance. nato s foreign ministers meet at a pivotal time for our security. we see that president putin s war of aggression
finland has still not been ratified as a member by turkey and hungary, and that still has to happen. but finland join and that still has to happen. but finlandjoin in, and that still has to happen. but finland join in, that has a long border with russia, 800 miles, 1300 kilometres, so clearly, it is something that is important for the security of nato itself, but also it is something that has already provoked russia. russia, of course, its focus is on the war in ukraine, but it says this is moscow today, an escalation, finland s membership. i think what we will see now is how that relationship develops. for example, in some of the countries that are on the border with russia, there have been nato troops from other countries going to put an enhanced military presence, to reassure them for their own security. it is not clear whether that would happen, for example, to finland or even sweden, when and if
against ukraine grinds on. we will meet in the nato ukraine commission with the foreign minister where we will address how to sustain and ramp up support from nato allies to ukraine. both the urgent needs, but also i expect that allies will start to develop a more long term programme to assist and support ukraine, to help them develop with nato allies and move from the soviet era standards doctrines to nato standards and move closer to the euro atlantic family. so, why is this such a significant moment for both finland and nato? let s take a look back. the north atlantic treaty organization was formed in 1949 by 12 countries,