By Athena Papakosta

The Prime Minister of Sweden is in Washington today, Ulf Christerson and the foreign minister of the country, Tobias Billstrom. The purpose of the trip is to complete the process for Sweden’s accession to NATO.

The final hurdle to the Nordic country becoming the 32nd Member State of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization was cleared last week, when the Hungarian parliament overwhelmingly approved the protocol for Stockholm’s accession to the Alliance and the country’s president, Thomas Sullyoksigned it yesterday, Tuesday.

The prime minister of Hungary, Viktor Orbán, who still maintains relations and even good ones with the president of Russia, Vladimir Putindespite international pressure to the contrary, delayed giving the required green light for more than 600 days.

He was not alone in this. His companion in the… delay was the president of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdoganafter Ankara said yes in January with 285 MPs voting in favor and 55 against, with analysts not hesitating to underline that the Turkish government bowed to pressure from Washington against the backdrop of the F-16 sale.

The process of Sweden joining the military alliance will be completed when Stockholm hands over the final documents to NATO and representatives of the United States.

This will end the country’s 200-year-long foreign policy neutrality – during which Stockholm avoided military alliances and war.

For Moscow this is a strategic blow below the waist.

As Politico wrote, the inclusion of Sweden – after it and its neighbor Finland – is equivalent to turning the Baltic Sea into… a NATO lake.

its accession will allow the Alliance to expand further and indeed, a breath away from the Russian borders. It is equivalent to strengthening security in the North as it also creates new balances of power in the Arctic Circle. At the same time, it gives impetus to NATO’s deterrence strategy and thus makes Article 5 – the cornerstone of NATO’s founding treaty – more effective.

According to analyzes of the international media, in times of crisis, Sweden, as a member of the NATO Alliance, will be a crucial link between the Baltic and the Atlantic, which with its well-equipped army, its state-of-the-art submarines and Gripen fighters will strengthen significantly the NATO arsenal.

Russia, for its part, is not happy at all and has already made it clear that it will respond with countermeasures.

A few days ago, the representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry, Maria Zakharova, emphasized that “we will closely monitor what Sweden will do in this aggressive military bloc, how it will fulfill its role as a member (of NATO)… and accordingly we will shape our response, with military-technical and other countermeasures”.

The time is now counting down for Sweden to officially join the NATO Alliance, and until Monday the country’s flag will fly alongside those of the remaining 31 members.