Russia and Ukraine flashpoint

[SecondWar]

Zkuq said:

SecondWar said:

I know Russia has threatened Finland about attempting to join Nato will see a Russian military reaction. Thing is though, unlike Ukraine, Finland is an EU member. Whilst the EU doesn’t have an explicit defensive pact in its treaties like Nato’s article 5 it seems incredibly unlikely that the EU wouldn’t itself respond to an attack on a member state with its own military action.

I'm pretty sure it's more along the lines of Finland joining NATO would have political and military consequences, to which Russia would have to reach. Obviously Finland joining NATO would have political and military consequences since NATO is kind of a political and military organization, but that part's true regardless of Russia. I believe Russia has stated only that it would react, somehow, to Finland joining NATO. Of course the choice of words is probably not accidental, and it's probably meant to sound somewhat threatening - but not quite as threatening as directly threatening with a military reaction.

It's a fine line Russia has to walk here to try to minimize the likelyhood of Finland joining NATO, because they can't just allow Finland to join NATO like it's no big deal to them, but at the same time, they probably don't want to provoke Finland into more eagerly joining NATO (well, at least more than they are already doing).

Thing is though if they did want to respond militarily, they’d have to do it before Finland joined Nato otherwise it would trigger Nato’s article 5. That’s what they’ve dine with Ukraine. My point is it would still likely trigger an EU response.