Maria Zakharova, Russia’s foreign-ministry spokesperson, shrugged off the comment, describing it as “information warfare.”
But the threat shouldn’t be dismissed so quickly. With Sweden now formally accepted as a member of the alliance, key Russian cities and military assets are in closer range of NATO attacks.
Russia menaces the Baltics
NATO planners have long seen the alliance’s northeastern flank, the Baltic nations of Lithuania, Estonia, and Latvia, as a weak point.
The territory used to be part of the Soviet empire, and analysts believe Russian President Vladimir Putin has long harbored ambitions to bring it back under Moscow’s control.
In documents leaked in January, German military experts envisage a scenario in which Russia defeats Ukraine and then attacks NATO’s Baltic members, spelling out how Putin could seek to realize his ambition.
The documents say that Russia could stir internal turmoil and then move troops into the Suwalki Gap, a 65-mile stretch of territory connecting Russia’s Kaliningrad enclave on the Baltic Sea to Belarus, a close Kremlin ally.
The move would cut the Baltic NATO members off from the rest of Europe, exposing them to further Russian attacks.
But Sweden’s membership gives the alliance potent, new ways of deterring Russia from attacking the Baltic region.
Nima Khorrami, an analyst at the Arctic Institute, recently told Business Insider that Sweden’s membership “extends NATO’s missile range, putting strategic locations in Kaliningrad and St. Petersburg within reach.”
“This adds another layer of deterrence against potential Russian aggression, as NATO forces can effectively respond to threats in real time,” he said.
St. Petersburg, Russia’s second city, has long been the base of Russia’s Baltic fleet.
Kaliningrad was formerly named Königsberg and was seized by the Soviet Union from Germany in World War II. It extends Russia’s capacity to project its power into the Baltic region, containing air defenses, electronic-warfare units to scramble GPS systems, cruise missiles, and more.
It would likely play a key role in any Russian attempt to attack the Suwalki Gap and Baltic nations.
“Degrading Russian assets there is critical for NATO operations in the area. That would, in particular, need a saturation of Russian air-defense systems,” Oscar Jonsson, a researcher at the Swedish Defence University, told BI.
“Sweden is important for both safely receiving NATO troops and capabilities and by being hard to target for Russian forces, while being close enough to Kaliningrad to launch long-range precision capabilities. As its closest, Sweden is 280 km away from Kaliningrad which is a good distance,” he said.
It found that as part of a decadelong restructuring process, Russia would increase its military forces in the region and place nuclear-capable Iskander missiles in Belarus.
Russia has long accused NATO of seeking to encircle it, with Putin citing the claim as part of the justification for Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine.
But with Sweden becoming the newest member of the alliance, Putin has inadvertently placed his forces at a serious disadvantage in a key region.
“Russia’s previous false accusations that it is surrounded by NATO are now becoming a reality,” Linkevicius said.
The ratification cements NATO’s presence in the Nordic region with all countries now members, and makes the Baltic essentially a “Nato sea” right on Vladimir Putin‘s doorstep.
Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken presided at a ceremony in which Sweden’s “instrument of accession” to the alliance was officially deposited at the State Department.
“This is a historic moment for Sweden. It’s historic for alliance. It’s history for the transatlantic relationship,” Mr Blinken said as he welcomed the 32nd country into the group. “Our Nato alliance is now stronger, larger than it’s ever been.”
The Nato Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg described it as “a historic day,” adding: “After over 200 years of non-alignment Sweden now enjoys the protection granted under Article 5, the ultimate guarantee of Allies’ freedom and security”.
Article 5 of Nato’s treaty obliges all members to come to the aid of an ally whose territory or security is under threat. It has only been activated once – by the US after the 11 September, 2001, attacks – and is the collective security guarantee that Sweden has sought since Russia invaded Ukraine.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, right, accepts Sweden’s instruments of accession from Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson (Reuters)
Finland and Sweden both applied to join the defence alliance in the wake of Russian President Putin ordering the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. While Finland officially joined Nato last April, Sweden’s bid was held up by Hungary and Turkey.
Turkey expressed concern that Sweden was harboring and not taking enough action against members of the Kurdistan Workers’ party (PKK), which is deemed a terrorist group by Ankara, the US and the EU. The Turkish parliament finally gave approval in January. As for Hungary, it continued to drag its feet, without ever being so clear about the reasons for its objections. Populist
President Viktor Orban is Putin’s closest ally in Europe, and has been a block on EU-wide funding for Ukraine. Some have suggested that Orban has sought to play up his nation’s military and economic leverage to look strong to a domestic audience. Hungary finally ratified in the decision within the last week.
“Good things come to those who wait. No better example,” Mr Blinken said.
The White House said that having Sweden as a Nato ally “will make the United States and our allies even safer.”
A Ukrainian serviceman from air defence unit of the 93rd Mechanized Brigade fires a AK-74 assault rifle on the eastern frontline near Bakhmut (REUTERS)
“Nato is the most powerful defensive alliance in the history of the world, and it is as critical today to ensuring the security of our citizens as it was 75 years ago when our alliance was founded out of the wreckage of the Second World War,” it said in a statement.
Mr Kristersson was due to visit the White House and then be a guest of honor at President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address to Congress late on Thursday. Mr Biden is expected to cite Sweden’s accession to Nato as evidence that Putin’s intent to divide and weaken the alliance has failed as a direct result of the Ukraine invasion. He is also set to use Sweden’s decision to join to step up calls for reluctant Republicans to approved stalled military assistance to Ukraine as the war enters its third year.
Ukraine has been facing Russian advances in eastern areas of the 600-mile frontline while having to contend with shortages of ammunition. While the EU has managed to overcome Orban’s objections to push through some fresh funding, the US Congress still cannot agree. As Washington is the single largest supplier of military aid to Kyiv, Ukrainian officials have urged the US to agree new funds as soon as possible, as it is having a direct impact on the frontline.
The Swedish flag will be raised outside the military organization’s headquarters in Brussels on Monday. “Sweden will now take its rightful place at Nato’s table, with an equal say in shaping Nato policies and decisions,” Mr Stoltenberg said in his statement.
“Sweden’s accession makes Nato stronger, Sweden safer and the whole alliance more secure,” he added. He said that the move “demonstrates that Nato’s door remains open and that every nation has the right to choose its own path.”
Sweden has already got a taste of military exercises with NATO. Nordic response, a first-of-its-time training venture was launched in recent days across northern Norway, Sweden and Finland. The exercises across land, air and sea involve more than 20,000 troops from 13 nations, including the UK.
Russia isn’t ready for the surprise NATO attack its strategists foresee
Michael Peck – March 9, 2024
Russia isn’t ready for the surprise NATO attack its strategists foresee
Russian strategists believe their country must be ready for NATO conventional missile strikes.
Russian media publicized their article just as NATO war games began.
The missile strike they think NATO is planning is a mirror of how Russia itself would fight a war.
Russian strategists argue its military needs more robust systems to defend against a NATO surprise attack that would come in the form of conventional missile strikes, a warning that comes as NATO conducts a massive exercise near Russia’s northern border.
A recent article in Voyennaya Mysl (“Military Thought”) argues that a likely scenario is a “likely enemy” — presumably the US and its NATO allies — launching a massive barrage of missiles at vital Russian facilities, a strategy that looks a lot like Russia’s. “An attack might begin with a rapid global strike alongside several massive missile and aviation strikes on the country’s administrative-political and military-industrial infrastructure,” according to an official TASS news agency summary of the article, which recommends expanding the missions and equipment of the Russian Aerospace Forces, or VKS.
How exactly NATO would attack Russia in this scenario is unclear, though the Russian analysts seem to be describing what the US military would call “multi-domain operations.” The article speaks of “joint operative formations” that consist of “compact, highly mobile combined multi-role groups of troops capable of inflicting heavy losses on the administrative-political and military-industrial infrastructure in all spheres: on the ground, on the high seas, in the air, in outer space and in cyberspace.”
The attack would be preceded by “provocations” to justify a war, as well as the deployment of forces near Russia. “The enemy will take potentially aggressive action, including provocations, for the purpose of controlling the situation, as well as intensify all types of intelligence activity. In addition, it may start deploying aircraft carrier strike groups and ships with guided missiles under the guise of exercises. Enemy aircraft, including strategic bombers and drones, will begin to perform regular flights near Russia’s national borders.”
The attack itself would begin with a massive air offensive (and by 2030, attack from space), “consisting of a rapid (instant) global strike and several (from 2-3 to 5-7) massive missile and air strikes,” the article warned.
This perceived NATO strategy of massive strikes risks compelling Russia to use its nuclear weapons, especially tactical nukes, to defend itself. But it is not without some grounding. In October 2022, the former CIA director and retired Army Gen. David Petraeus warned Russia that the use of a nuclear weapon against Ukraine would prompt a heavy NATO response that would sink the entire Black Sea Fleet and “take out” the ground forces in Ukraine “that we can see and identify.”
A US Marine Corps pilot flies an F/A-18D Hornet ahead of Exercise Nordic Response 24 at Andenes, Norway on Feb. 29, 2024.Cpl. Christopher Hernandez/US Marine Corps
Perhaps not coincidentally, Russian media publicized the article just as NATO began Nordic Response 2024, a large, 11-day exercise involving more than 20,000 troops, 50 ships, and 100 aircraft operating across Norway, Finland, and Sweden. It will also be notable by the presence of new NATO members Finland and Sweden, whose accession to the alliance has Russia worried over the security of its vast northern frontier. In 2020, the US flew B-52 bombers in the Barents Sea, which abuts Russia’s Arctic territories.
Predictably, the Russian experts urged more defense spending. This would include expanding the equipment and missions of the Russian Aerospace Forces, including the development of more advanced UAVs and other weapons, creating an automated fire control system (presumably AI-based), and “the improvement of reconnaissance, aviation engineering, airfield and other types of comprehensive support.”
The call to boost spending on airpower comes as Russia’s defense spending explodes, with the Kremlin diverting one-third of the national budget to finance the military and the war in Ukraine. That’s triple the amount in 2021, before the war began, by some estimates. While the Russian Air Force has had some success in supporting ground troops — albeit at a heavy cost — during recent Russian offensives, its overall performance in the war has been surprisingly ineffective.
Ironically, the missile strike that Russian military experts accuse the West of planning is a mirror image of how Russia itself would fight a war. “Russian military thought has broadly cohered around the idea of ‘active defense’ in the event of a NATO-Russia war,” Julian Waller, a Russia expert at the Center for Naval Analyses think tank in Arlington, Virginia, told Business Insider. “Such that due to expectations of overwhelming kinetic strikes in the initial phases by the West, Russia needs to be able to withstand these while also striking back at critical military and civilian infrastructure. This involves heavy usage of missiles, long-range fires, and VKS assets.”
Michael Peck is a defense writer whose work has appeared in Forbes, Defense News, Foreign Policy magazine, and other publications. He holds an MA in political science from Rutgers Univ.
Republicans’ Big FBI Cut Came From Scrapping One Senator’s Earmark
Catie Edmondson – March 9, 2024
Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) in his office on Capitol Hill in Washington on Dec. 13, 2022. (Haiyun Jiang/The New York Times)
WASHINGTON — When Republicans won the House majority, some of their most conservative members pledged to use their power to slash the budgets of the federal agencies they claimed had been weaponized against them — chief among them the FBI.
So when Speaker Mike Johnson unveiled the package of six government spending bills he had negotiated with Democrats that cleared Congress on Friday, he touted the “deep cuts” — 6% — Republicans had secured to the agency’s budget.
But the story of the FBI cut is not so much one of how House Republicans used their slim majority to raze the budget of an agency they claim has gone rogue. Instead, it is a remarkable yarn about how a single powerful senator used budgetary sleight of hand to steer hundreds of millions of dollars to a single project in his state, only to see the money slashed by members of his own party after he retired.
Out of the $654 million lawmakers agreed to cut this year from the FBI’s operating budget, $622 million came from eliminating what was essentially an old earmark: money for construction at the bureau’s campus at Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Alabama. The funding was placed into the budget years ago by Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama, a legendary pork-barreling veteran who retired in 2022 at 88.
The actual cut to the FBI’s operating budget — mostly for personnel and operations — was roughly $32 million, or 0.3%.
Ultraconservative Republicans like Rep. Chip Roy of Texas who voted against the spending package this week, deriding it as full of budgetary gimmicks, pointed to the elimination of Shelby’s pet project as a prime example of how little his party had actually been able to cut.
Grousing about the FBI budget cut on the House floor this week, Roy said, “What they won’t tell you is, 95% of that cut is eliminating an earmark from Richard Shelby, because Richard Shelby is no longer here to defend his pet project building back in Alabama.”
For years, Shelby used his perch on the Appropriations Committee to single-handedly transform the landscape of his home state, harnessing billions of federal dollars to conjure the creation and expansion of university buildings and research programs, airports and seaports, and military and space facilities.
One of his most prioritized projects was the twin FBI campuses at Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, where over the course of a decade, he steered more than $3 billion to build up the 1,100 acres of land the bureau has secured there for facilities dedicated to cyberthreat intelligence and training.
The FBI has said to expect that more than 4,000 jobs will come to Huntsville over the next eight to 10 years.
Normally, such pet projects are funded through earmarks — a practice that allows lawmakers to direct federal funds for specific projects to their states and districts. Those projects are enumerated in a separate list, which clearly lays out how much federal money is going to a specific project, and which lawmaker requested it.
Shelby instead shoehorned money for the campus into the text of the spending bill, in an apparent effort to ensure it would be available even after he left Congress. For multiple years in a row, the Biden administration requested about $61 million for the FBI’s construction budget. Instead, at the senator’s behest, Congress gave it $632 million one year, and $652 million the next. Shelby did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In each case, the laws stated that the additional funding was to be used to address the FBI’s “highest priorities outside of the immediate national capital area,” meaning Washington, D.C.
While it did not say so in the legislation, it was clear that that meant only one place: Huntsville.
“Growing the FBI’s presence in Huntsville has been a priority of mine for quite some time,” Shelby said in an announcement in 2022 touting the additional funding. “And I am proud to have helped bring it to fruition.”
Ukraine war: Is Europe doing enough to help against Russia?
James Landale – BBC – March 9, 2024
The EU and the West have pledged to support Ukraine, whatever the cost. But are they living up to that vow?
When the widow of the Russian dissident Alexei Navalny addressed the European Parliament recently, she said something striking. “If you really want to defeat Putin, you have to become an innovator,” Yulia Navalnaya told MEPs. “And you have to stop being boring.”
Being innovative and interesting may be traits not always associated with some European politicians.
But they are having to think differently, not just about how better to support Ukraine but also to increase pressure on Russia.
The shadow of a potential Donald Trump presidency hangs over the continent, raising doubts about America’s long-term backing for Ukraine.
A $60bn (£47bn) package of US military support for Ukraine is held up in the House of Representatives. And on the battlefield, Russian forces are beginning to make gains against their less well armed opponents.
Two years on from Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, European capitals have largely maintained their political backing for Kyiv.
In January the European Union agreed in January a €50bn package ($55bn; £43bn) of grants and loans to fund Ukraine’s government and public services.
But the EU failed to meet its target of sending one million shells to Ukraine by the beginning of this month.
EU diplomats are still haggling over plans for a new €5bn top-up to the European Peace Facility to buy more weapons for Kyiv. And Nato says that this year about 12 European members may still not meet the alliance’s target of spending 2% of national output on defence.
As politicians debate support, Ukraine is losing ground – and paying in blood
More weapons
With the diplomatic and military balance is shifting, Europe is having to think creatively about how to support Ukraine and deter future Russian aggression.
There are existing stocks of ammunition and weapons Europe could give to Ukraine.
UK Foreign Secretary David Cameron told the House of Lords this week that instead of decommissioning weapons systems at great expense once they technically pass their expiry dates, allies should give them to Ukraine.
He also said countries in Eastern Europe with “legacy Soviet ammunition” suitable for Ukrainian weapons should release those stocks immediately.
But, as throughout this war, European leaders are still agonising over what weapons to give Kyiv.
The latest row is over Germany’s Taurus missiles. These have range of about 300 miles (500km), more than the UK-supplied Storm Shadows being used by Ukraine.
Many allies believe Taurus would give Ukraine the chance to strike deep behind Russian lines.
But German Chancellor Olaf Scholz fears they could also be used against Russian cities and is resisting, fearing escalation.
Olaf Scholz is under pressure at home and abroad to give the Taurus missile to Ukraine, amid recent demonstrations in Berlin
There are also plans to get Ukraine desperately needed artillery shells. The Czech government agreed a $1.5bn (£1.2bn) deal this week for a consortium of 18 Nato and EU countries to buy 800,000 rounds – both 155mm and 122mm calibre – from outside the EU.
This is a significant shift for more protectionist-minded EU members, especially France. But it will not meet Ukraine’s demand for the 2.5m shells it says it needs this year.
More defense spending
Policymakers are also are mulling new ways to increase spending on defence, including a proposal for the European Investment Bank to end its ban on funding defence projects.
There are proposals for European countries to co-operate more on defence procurement, buying arms jointly from manufacturers to drive down costs. Governments are also looking to give defence firms longer-term contracts to boost production in a highly risk adverse industry.
But little will happen overnight. One British minister told me: “One forgets that Dunkirk to D-Day was four years. It takes a long time to generate the mass to go from defence to offence.”
More military support for Ukraine
Estonia wants all Nato countries to commit – as it has – to give Ukraine at least 0.25% of their output in military support.
This would raise about 120bn euros per year. Although some allies are sympathetic, this idea has yet to win widespread backing.
Some Europe policymakers are also drawing up plans for a form of updated “lend-lease” arrangement to loan weapons to Ukraine, just as the allies did for the USSR during WWII. But these ideas are at an early stage.
Russian assets
Much thought is going into how best to exploit the roughly 300bn euros of frozen Russian assets held in Western financial institutions.
Giving the money outright to Ukraine might be illegal and put European assets at risk in other jurisdictions.
But the EU is looking at a plan to use the profits to fund military support for Ukraine. And the UK is looking at a separate proposal to use the assets as collateral for fast-track reparations for Ukraine.
The aim is not just to raise cash for Ukraine but also level a strategic blow against Russia, hitting its economy hard.
Russia’s economy under Vladimir Putin has managed to sidestep Western sanctions
So some European policymakers are thinking laterally. But tensions remain.
Many Eastern European countries are committing more military resource than their Western counterparts. Loose-lipped German officers are upsetting allies by revealing military secrets.
And President Emmanuel Macron of France has ruffled feathers by suggesting the West should consider putting military boots on the ground in Ukraine, thought by many analysts to be an unnecessary row over an implausible option.
Perhaps the biggest disagreement within European capitals is about the long-term challenge from Russia.
A recent poll from the European Council on Foreign Relations think tank suggested while most Europeans support Ukraine, only 1 in 10 think it can win an outright victory.
Some analysts say this is because European governments have not understood the broader challenge from Russia.
“There is no evidence that the highest political level has understood the scale of the threat or tried to explain it to the public,” says Keir Giles, senior consulting fellow at Chatham House, a British think tank.
“If action comes too late to avoid disaster, it will have been because of criminal complacency.”
So will Europe rise to the challenge? Maybe there was one small hint of change this week.
France has long been criticised for not giving Ukraine enough military support. But President Macron – who once said Russia should not be humiliated – was in bullish form.
“We are surely approaching a moment for Europe in which it will be necessary not to be cowards,” he said.
Some Russians are resisting the state’s ‘all-pervasive’ crackdown on war dissidents – and paying for it
Katie Balevic – March 9, 2024
Some Russians are resisting the state’s ‘all-pervasive’ crackdown on war dissidents – and paying for it
The Russian government is cracking down on citizens who oppose the war.
Some 260 people have been jailed for anti-war stances, a Russian human rights organization said.
The crackdown comes as Russians mourn the death of prominent Putin critic Alexey Navalny.
As Russia’s war in Ukraine plods onward, so does its severe surveillance of citizens who have spoken out against the war effort.
As the invasion enters its third year, authorities have been bringing up charges against citizens like 70-year-old human rights activist Oleg Orlov for “discrediting the army,” CNN reported.
“The state in our country is once again controlling not only social, political, and economic life but is now claiming full control over culture, scientific thought, and is inserting itself in private life. It’s becoming all-pervasive,” Orlov said during his trial in Moscow, after which he was sentenced to two and a half years in prison, CNN reported.
His crime was penning an article in the French press in 2022 about Russia’s descent into fascism and President Vladimir Putin’s “mass murder of the Ukrainian people,” according to The New York Times.
Some 260 people are currently detained in Russian jails for their antiwar sentiments, according to OVD-Info, a Russian human rights group, CNN reported.
Shortly after the invasion began in February 2022, Putin signed a law punishing people who share “false information” with up to 15 years in prison. People have faced punishment for benign acts of protest, like holding up a blank posterboard or even referring to the conflict as a war, according to Human Rights Watch.
“They will imprison old people, they will imprison people who have disabilities. They will imprison people with children, women with children,” Darya Korolenko, a lawyer at OVD-Info, told CNN. “They just want everyone to be silent.”
Similar to Orlov’s case, an elderly woman named Evgeniya Mayboroda was jailed for reposting what authorities called anti-war stances on social media, CNN reported.
In another case, 67-year-old Nadezhda Buyanova, a doctor in Moscow, was arrested and had her apartment searched after she was accused of sympathizing with Ukraine.
Russia’s tightening grip comes on the heels of the death of Alexey Navalny, one of Putin’s top critics whose sudden demise in a Russian prison has been blamed on state actors. Hundreds of Russians nationwide were detained at memorials for the late Navalny.
Dr. John Gartner: The world is watching “a fundamental breakdown in Trump’s ability to use language”
Chauncey DeVega – March 7, 2024
Donald Trump CHANDAN KHANNA/AFP via Getty Images
It has become undeniably clear and obvious to any reasonable person that Donald Trump is experiencing increasing challenges with his speech, language, and memory during these last few weeks and months. Such a conclusion does not require a huge team of investigative journalists: a person only has to watch the corrupt ex-president’s speeches, interviews and other public behavior. For example, at a series of rallies and other events last weekend, Trump repeatedly confused one person with another. Like a broken computer in a science fiction movie, Trump appears to have moments where he cannot speak, appears lost in his thinking, and is more generally confused as he spouts nonsense words and non-sequiturs.
MediasTouch editor Ron Filipowski shared a montage online of 32 examples of Trump experiencing severe challenges during his recent speeches in Virginia and North Carolina last Saturday. 32 examples from just two speeches where the ex-president “mispronounced words, got confused, mixed up names, forgot names, and babbled insane nonsense.”
Montage of 32 clips from Trump’s two speeches yesterday where he mispronounced words, got confused, mixed up names, forgot names, and babbled insane nonsense. pic.twitter.com/SQeURo2zhd
I have said this before, he is not as sharp as he was in 2016 and not even as sharp as he was in 2020….Listen, he’s never been a super articulate or eloquent person….But he’s consistently missing up — uh, mixing up names of heads of state. He’s mixing up names like Nancy Pelosi and Nikki Haley. I mean, this is it’s gotten worse, it hasn’t gotten better he’s not nearly as sharp as he was.
We’re seeing with more and more frequency, even as the media — and we talked about it earlier, how the weekend was full of polls and obsession about President Biden’s age — it is this, Trump, who day after day is showing the signs of age but also pressure….because he is not getting as much of the share of the Republican vote as he’d like….Nikki Haley posting a win over the weekend. Pressure because of the money he now owes, nearly half a billion dollars in a couple cases in New York City, and pressure that his first criminal case, a case that could theoretically put him in prison, starts in just three weeks. We are seeing it night after night on the rally stage, where he seems to even just lose control of the English language. Mika [Brzezinski] cringes, I can’t help it either at the end of that clip. His team knows, but they’re just forging forward.”
Whatever one may think of Donald Trump the political leader, and all of the evil and vile things he has done in that capacity, he is a human being who appears to be in crisis. Moreover, that Donald Trump is leading President Biden in the polls and has a real chance of becoming the next president of the United States should be a source of great alarm for anyone who claims to care about the well-being of the country and its future.
In a series of widely-readconversations with me here at Salon, Dr. John Gartner, a prominent psychologist and contributor to the bestselling book “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President,” has issued the following, almost prophetic warnings, about the ex-president’s behavior:
I had to speak out now because the 2024 election might turn on this issue of who is cognitively capable: Biden or Trump? It’s a major issue that will affect some people’s votes. Not enough people are sounding the alarm, that based on his behavior, and in my opinion, Donald Trump is dangerously demented. In fact, we are seeing the opposite among too many in the news media, the political leaders and among the public. There is also this focus on Biden’s gaffes or other things that are well within the normal limits of aging. By comparison, Trump appears to be showing gross signs of dementia. This is a tale of two brains. Biden’s brain is aging. Trump’s brain is dementing.
Continuing with this ongoing conversation, I asked Dr. Gartner, and several other leading mental health and medical professionals via email for their thoughts and insights about Donald Trump’s deeply troubling behavior last weekend (and more generally), what they believe is happening based on the public evidence, and what advice they would give Trump and those who care about him.
Dr. John Gartner is a psychologist and former professor at the Johns Hopkins University Medical School.
This is becoming a weekly ritual: A round-up of the latest behaviors evidencing Trump’s apparent dementia. For the eighth time, Trump announced that he was running against Obama. No one believed it when he said he was joking the first seven times, and he keeps saying it, showing just how deeply disoriented he is and how advanced his apparent dementia has become.
Trump is continuing to show more of these phonemic aphasias: “Venezuero” instead of Venezuela. He is also demonstrating semantic aphasias: “steak mountain or steak hill,” instead of “Snake mountain.” Trump is continuing to slur words. What is even more troubling is how Trump sometimes can’t form words at all but just makes sounds. For example, “Saudi Arabia and Russia will…. bluh-ub-bll….”
And finally, there were more examples last week of a fundamental breakdown in Trump’s ability to use language, to think and to communicate. When Trump visited the border, he said: “Nobody [can] explain to me how allowing millions of people from places unknown, from countries unknown, who don’t speak languages — we have languages coming into our country, we have nobody that even speaks those languages. They are truly foreign languages. Nobody speaks them.” In my opinion, Donald Trump is getting worse as his cognitive state continues to degrade. If Trump were your relative, you’d be thinking about assisted care right now.
Harry Segal is a senior lecturer at Cornell University and Weill Cornell Medical School. He holds a Ph.D. in English Literature from Yale University and a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from the University of Michigan. He also conducts a part-time practice in Ithaca, New York, and has written extensively on personality disorders.
I see a dramatic change since he announced his candidacy in November 2022. That speech was more typical of Trump during his presidency – he relied on the teleprompter, but his digressions were easy to follow even if they were filled with lies. But over the past year, his appearances have been erratic. Sometimes, as with the CNN Town Hall, he made few gaffes. But in the past six months, Trump’s rallies are filled with strange lapses of logic. He has confused Biden with Obama, spoke of World War II, and has lapsed into bewildering digressions that are hard to follow. Only this weekend he said: “We have languages coming into our country that no one can speak,” a strange grasping for meaning, bordering on neologism. At other times, he seems to get lost in the middle of a sentence.
Since this is an intermittent problem, it suggests that when Trump is especially stressed and exhausted, he suffers cognitive slippage that affects the way he associates words or their meaning. Note, though, that Trump’s pathological lying is itself a form of mental illness, so these cognitive lapses are literally sitting atop what appears to be an already compromised psychological functioning.
There seems to be an emerging difficulty maintaining linguistic control that may well be caused by his incapacity to manage the stress caused by his multiple indictments, court appearances, and huge legal fines. In addition, his daughter and son-in-law are no longer supporting him, and his wife hasn’t appeared with him in public at any of his rallies or victory speeches. This lack of support may be contributing to what appears to be his intermittent cognitive disorganization.
First, I would recommend a full neuro-psychological assessment to identify the deficits in his cognitive functioning. Given those results, I would then recommend limiting his daily activity, scheduling tasks that require high-level cognition early in the day to avoid “sun-downing,” and psychotherapy to explore the sources of stress contributing to mental difficulties. I would certainly recommend that he immediately cease running for president.
Vincent Greenwood, Ph.D, is the founder and executive director of the Washington Center For Cognitive Therapy, a mental health program that provides clinical services in the Washington D.C. area. He has worked as a research associate and training leader at Johns Hopkins University and the National Institute of Health. In 2020, he launched DutyToInform.org to disseminate information about the intersection of psychology and our recent political turmoil. He is the author of The Open And Shut Case Of Donald Trump.
In the past week, we have seen Trump say the following things which could indicate a larger problem with speech and cognition: “Putin has so little respect for Obama…we have a fool for a president.” This is an example of mixing up people, not just an occasional mix-up of a name. It is similar to his going on and on about Nikki Haley being responsible for security at the Capitol rather than Nancy Pelosi.
Trump has displayed this kind of confusion with increasing regularity over the past few years. It is meaningful because the confusion of people, in contrast to the occasional forgetting of names, is a sign of early dementia, as noted by the Dementia Care Society.
In his speech in North Carolina, Trump said “migrant cime” leaving out the “r”; and was unable to say “Venezuela” which came out sounding like “Venezwheregull.” These are examples of what we call phonemic paraphasia which is associated with underlying brain damage.
(Aphasia is the term we use for disorders of communication. Aphasia is a symptom of some other underlying condition, such as dementia, stroke or head injury. A phoneme is the smallest unit of speech – often a letter or two – that distinguishes one word from another. For example, the letter “r” in the word “far” separates that word from “fad,” “fan,” and “fat.” Phonemic paraphasia is the inappropriate substitution of one sound for the other).
We all stumble over and mispronounce words occasionally. This is not what is going on with Trump. The incidence of these kinds of mistakes takes him into this realm of phonemic paraphasia, which is a sign of underlying brain damage, not just aging. Even when compared to his speech of a few years ago, you can observe a noticeable difference. When you compare it to his speech as a middle-aged man, the shift is radical and ominous.
Trump has also been displaying another kind of paraphasia, called semantic paraphasia, also associated with cognitive deterioration. (Semantic paraphasia involves choosing incorrect words). Last week in his South Carolina speech, he said, “soup pie cane” when he meant to say “supply chain,” and “lady, lady, lady,” when he meant to say “later.” As a younger man Trump’s linguistic style might be characterized as glib but was not marked by the use of the substitution of incorrect words. Semantic paraphasia is a qualitative marker – not of aging -but of underlying disease.
Trump’s unscripted speech of late has also revealed other signs of likely dementia. These include mid-thought change of subject, repetition of words, the use of fillers (“well,” “um,” “so,”), trouble formulating complete sentences not to mention paragraphs, getting words in the wrong order, and simpler word choice.
Loss of vocabulary is not a correlate of normal aging. If anything, there appears to be a slight increase in vocabulary as one gets into their seventies and eighties. It is noteworthy that Trump exhibits a markedly declining vocabulary with overreliance on superlatives over the years. He has gone from what might be described as possessing a somewhat sophisticated vocabulary to one sorely lacking in suppleness.
The key question at the moment regarding Trump’s fitness is the following one. Is there a significant change in his cognitive baseline and are the changes markers of disease rather than normal decline linked to aging? In my professional opinion, the answer to that two-part question is yes. Trump has shown a noteworthy decline in his linguistic competency from his previous baseline, and the decline exposes clinical signs of disorder, not simply aging.
Russia’s presidential election is nearing. We already know who the winner will be
Rob Picheta – March 8, 2024
Russia is nearing a presidential election that is all but certain to extend Vladimir Putin’s rule throughout this decade and into the 2030s.
The vast majority of votes will be cast over three days from 15 March, though early and postal voting has already begun, including in occupied parts of Ukraine where Russian forces are attempting to exert authority.
But this is not a normal election; the poll is essentially a constitutional box-ticking exercise that carries no prospect of removing Putin from power.
The president’s dominance over the Russian electoral system has already been reinforced as the election looms. The country’s only anti-war candidate has been barred from standing, and Alexey Navalny, the poisoned and jailed former opposition leader who was the most prominent anti-Putin voice in Russia, died last month.
Here’s what you need to know about the election.
When and where will the election take place?
Voting will be held from Friday March 15 until Sunday March 17, the first Russian presidential election to take place over three days.
A second round of voting would take place three weeks later if no candidate gets more than half the vote, though it would be a major surprise if that were required. Russians are electing the position of president alone; the next legislative elections, which form the make-up of the Duma, are scheduled for 2026.
Early voting began late last month in certain hard-to-access areas, with approximately 70,000 people able to cast their ballots in remote areas of Russia’s Far Eastern Federal District, according to state news agency TASS. The region makes up more than a third of Russia’s total territory but has only about 5% of its population.
Voting will take place over three days in March. – Maxim Shemetov/Reuters
Early voting in Zaporizhzhia, one of four Ukrainian regions Russia said it would annex in September 2022 in violation of international law, also began on February 25, TASS said.
Russia has already held regional votes and referenda in those occupied territories, an effort dismissed by the international community as a sham but which the Kremlin sees as central to its campaign of Russification.
How long has Putin been in power?
Putin signed a law in 2021 that allowed him to run for two more presidential terms, potentially extending his rule until 2036, after a referendum the previous year allowed him to reset the clock on his term limits.
This election will mark the start of the first of those two extra terms.
He has essentially been the country’s head of state for the entirety of the 21st century, rewriting the rules and conventions of Russia’s political system to extend and expand his powers.
That already makes him Russia’s longest-serving ruler since Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin.
Putin’s previous efforts to stay in control included a 2008 constitutional amendment that extended presidential terms from four years to six, and a temporary job swap with his then Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev the same year, that preceded a swift return to the presidency in 2012.
Who else is running?
Candidates in Russian elections are tightly controlled by the Central Election Commission (CEC), enabling Putin to run against a favorable field and reducing the potential for an opposition candidate to gain momentum.
The same is true this year. “Each candidate fields juxtaposing ideologies and domestic policies, but collectively they feed into Putin’s aim of tightening his grip on Russia during his next presidential term,” wrote Callum Fraser of the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) think tank.
Nikolay Kharitonov will represent the Communist Party, which has been allowed to run a candidate in each election this century, but has not gained as much as a fifth of the vote share since Putin’s first presidential election.
Two other Duma politicians, Leonid Slutsky and Vladislav Davankov, are also running. Davankov is deputy chair of the Duma, Russia’s lower house of parliament, while Slutsky represents the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia, the party previously led by ultra-nationalist firebrand Vladimir Zhirinovsky, who died in 2022. All are considered to be reliably pro-Kremlin.
But there is notably no candidate who opposes Putin’s war in Ukraine; Boris Nadezhdin, previously the only anti-war figure in the field, was barred from standing by the CEC in February after the body claimed he had not received enough legitimate signatures nominating his candidacy.
In December, another independent candidate who openly spoke out against the war in Ukraine, Yekaterina Duntsova, was rejected by the CEC, citing alleged errors in her campaign group’s registration documents. Duntsova later called on people to support Nadezhdin’s candidacy.
Writing on social media in February, opposition activist Leonid Volkov dismissed the elections as a “circus,” saying they were meant to signal Putin’s overwhelming mass support. “You need to understand what the March ‘elections’ mean for Putin. They are a propaganda effort to spread hopelessness” among the electorate, Volkov said.
Are the elections fair?
Russia’s elections are neither free nor fair, and serve essentially as a formality to extend Putin’s term in power, according to independent bodies and observers both in and outside the country.
Putin’s successful campaigns have been in part the result of “preferential media treatment, numerous abuses of incumbency, and procedural irregularities during the vote count,” according to Freedom House, a global democracy watchdog.
Outside of election cycles, the Kremlin’s propaganda machine targets voters with occasionally hysterical pro-Putin material, and many news websites based outside Russia were blocked following the invasion of Ukraine, though more tech-savvy younger voters have grown accustomed to using VPNs to access them.
Protests are also tightly restricted, making the public expression of opposition a perilous and rare occurrence.
Ballot papers bearing Putin’s name are prepared ahead of the election. – Vladimir Nikolayev/AFP/Getty Images
Then, as elections come into view, genuine opposition candidates almost inevitably see their candidacies removed or find themselves prevented from seeking office, as Nadezhdin and Duntsova discovered during this cycle.
“Opposition politicians and activists are frequently targeted with fabricated criminal cases and other forms of administrative harassment designed to prevent their participation in the political process,” Freedom House noted in its most recent global report.
Is Putin popular in Russia?
Truly gauging popular opinion is notoriously difficult in Russia, where the few independent think tanks operate under strict surveillance and where, even in a legitimate survey, many Russians are fearful of criticizing the Kremlin.
But Putin undoubtedly has reaped the rewards of a political landscape tilted dramatically in his favor. The Levada Center, a non-governmental polling organization, reports Putin’s approval rating at over 80% – an eye-popping figure virtually unknown among Western politicians, and a substantial increase compared to the three years before the invasion of Ukraine.
The invasion gave Putin a nationalist message around which to rally Russians, and even as Russia’s campaign stuttered over the course of 2023, the war retained widespread support.
National security is top of mind for Russians as the election approaches; Ukrainian strikes on Russian border regions have brought the war home to many people inside the country, but support for the invasion — euphemistically termed a “special military operation” by Russia’s leaders — remains high.
The Levada Center found at the end of 2023 that “increased inflation and rising food prices may have a lasting impact on the mood of Russians,” with the proportion of Russians cutting back on spending increasing.
But that is not to say Russians expect the election to change the direction of the country. Putin benefits heavily from apathy; most Russians have never witnessed a democratic transfer of power between rival political parties in a traditional presidential election, and expressions of anger at the Kremlin are rare enough to keep much of the population disengaged from politics.
Putin’s former speechwriter, Abbas Gallyamov, told CNN last month that discontent against the president was increasing in Russia. Gallyamov said Putin is attempting to eliminate opposition leaders from society to at least ensure such discontent remains “unstructured,” “disorganized” and “leaderless” ahead of future elections.
How will Navalny’s death affect the election?
The timing of the death of Alexey Navalny – Putin’s most prominent critic – served to emphasize the control Russia’s leader exerts over his country’s politics.
In one of Navalny’s final court appearances before his death, he urged prison service workers to “vote against Putin.”
“I have a suggestion: to vote for any candidate other than Putin. In order to vote against Putin, you just need to vote for any other candidate,” he said on February 8.
Yulia Navalnaya, the widow of Alexey Navalny, addresses the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France, on February 28, 2024. – Johanna Geron/Reuters
His death has cast an ominous shadow over the campaign. Navalny’s widow, Yulia Navalnaya, urged the European Union to “not recognize the elections” in a passionate address to its Foreign Affairs Council a few days after she was widowed.
“Putin killed my husband exactly a month before the so-called elections. These elections are fake, but Putin still needs them. For propaganda. He wants the whole world to believe that everyone in Russia supports and admires him. Don’t believe this propaganda,” she said.
Thousands gathered for Navalny’s funeral in Moscow despite the threat of detention by Russian authorities.
Navalnaya has since urged Russian people to turn out at noon on the final day of the elections, March 17, as a show of protest. In a video posted on social media, Navalnaya told Russians they could “vote for any candidate besides Putin, you can ruin your ballot, you can write Navalny on it.”
She added that Russians did not have to vote, but could “stand at a polling station and then go home… the most important thing is to come.”
This story has been updated.
CNN’s Anna Chernova, Pauline Lockwood and Mariya Knight contributed reporting.
Trump meets with Hungary’s leader, Viktor Orbán, continuing his embrace of autocrats
Nicholas Riccardi and Justin Spike – March 8, 2024
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban speaks at CPAC in Dallas, Aug. 4, 2022. Former President Donald Trump is meeting Friday, March 8, 2024, with Orban, a prominent conservative populist whose crackdowns in Hungary have sparked criticism that he’s eroding that country’s democracy. The meeting comes as Hungary has had conflicts with President Joe Biden’s administration. (AP Photo/LM Otero, File)A fisherman casts a line near Mar-a-Lago, as former President Donald Trump is planning to meet Hungarian Prime Minister Victor Orban, Friday, March 8, 2024, in Palm Beach, Fla. (AP Photo/Marta Lavandier)A security guard stands near an entrance to Mar-a-Lago, as former President Donald Trump is planning to meet Hungarian Prime Minister Victor Orban, Friday, March 8, 2024, in Palm Beach, Fla. (AP Photo/Marta Lavandier)
Former President Donald Trump met Friday with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, as the likely Republican presidential nominee continued his embrace of autocratic leaders who are part of a global pushback against democratic traditions.
Orbán has become an icon to some conservative populists for championing what he calls “illiberal democracy,” replete with restrictions on immigration and LGBTQ+ rights. But he’s also cracked down on the press and judiciary in his country and rejiggered the country’s political system to keep his party in power while maintaining the closest relationship with Russia among all European Union countries.
In the U.S., Trump’s allies have embraced Orbán’s approach. On Thursday, as foreign dignitaries milled through Washington, D.C., ahead of President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address, Orbán skipped the White House and instead spoke at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank overseeing the 2025 Project, the effort to create a governing blueprint for Trump’s next term.
“Supporting families, fighting illegal migration and standing up for the sovereignty of our nations. This is the common ground for cooperation between the conservative forces of Europe and the U.S.,” Orbán wrote on X, formerly Twitter, after his Heritage appearance.
He then flew to Florida, where met Trump late Friday afternoon at the former president’s beachfront compound, Mar-a-Lago. Orbán posted on his Instagram account footage of him and his staff meeting with Trump and the former president’s staff, then of the prime minister walking through the compound and handing Melania Trump a giant bouquet of flowers.
In the video, Trump praised Orbán to a laughing crowd. “He’s a non-controversial figure because he says, ‘This is the way it’s going to be,’ and that’s the end of it. Right?” Trump said of the Hungarian prime minister. “He’s the boss.”
The Trump campaign said late Friday that the two men discussed “a wide range of issues affecting Hungary and the United States, including the paramount importance of strong and secure borders to protect the sovereignty of each nation.”
Campaigning Friday in Pennsylvania, Biden said of Trump: ’You know who he’s meeting with today down in Mar-a-Lago? Orbán of Hungary, who’s stated flatly that he doesn’t thinks democracy works, he’s looking for dictatorship.”
“I see a future where we defend democracy, not diminish it,” Biden added.
Orbán’s approach appeals to Trump’s brand of conservatives, who have abandoned their embrace of limited government and free markets for a system that sides with their own ideology, said Dalibor Rohac, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
“They want to use the tools of government to reward their friends and punish their opponents, which is what Orbán has done,” Rohac said.
The meeting also comes as Trump has continued to embrace authoritarians of all ideological stripes. He’s praised Russian President Vladimir Putin, Chinese President Xi Jinping and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un. Orbán’s government has reciprocated, repeatedly praising the former president.
On Friday, Hungary’s Foreign Minister, Péter Szijjártó, posted from Palm Beach, hailing Trump’s “strength” and implying that the world would be more peaceful were he still president.
“If Donald Trump had been elected President of the United States in 2020, the war in Ukraine, now in its third year, would not have broken out and the conflict in the Middle East would have been resolved much faster,” he wrote.
Orbán has served as Hungary’s prime minister since 2010. The next year, his party, Fidesz, used its two-thirds majority in the legislature to rewrite the nation’s constitution. It changed the retirement age for judges, forcing hundreds into early retirement, and vested responsibility for appointing new judges with a single political appointee who was widely accused of acting on behalf of Fidesz.
Fidesz later authored a new media law and set up a nine-member council to serve as the country’s media regulator. All nine members are Fidesz appointees, which media watchdogs say has facilitated a major decline in press freedom and plurality.
The country’s legislative lines have been redrawn to protect Fidesz members and no major news outlets remain that are critical of Orbán’s government, making it almost impossible for his party to lose elections, analysts say.
Orbán backed Trump’s reelection effort and has had frosty relations with the Biden administration, which pointedly did not invite Hungary to a summit on democracy it organized after the president took office. Hungarian officials have accused Biden’s ambassador to the country, former human rights lawyer David Pressman, of interfering in internal governmental affairs.
Earlier this week, Hungary objected to Biden’s choice of a former Dutch prime minister to serve as NATO’s new commander, potentially stalling the appointment.
The Hungarian leader also has enthusiastically boosted Trump’s latest presidential campaign, posting a message encouraging Trump to “keep fighting” after he was hit with the first of what would be four criminal cases against him last year. Last week, Orbán declared that a win by the former president would be “the only serious chance” for ending the war in Ukraine.
A video from the Heritage appearance posted by Orbán’s political director showed the prime minister speaking with Vivek Ramaswamy, a pharmaceutical entrepreneur who unsuccessfully ran for the Republican presidential nomination before dropping out and endorsing Trump. The Hungarian leader also met with Steve Bannon, a former Trump adviser who remains a vocal ally of the ex-president and is active in global populist circles.
Orbán’s visit this week comes after he signed a new National Sovereignty Law that penalizes any foreign support of political actors in Hungary, part of the prime minister’s longstanding battle against the European Union and international nonprofits criticizing his erosion of Hungary’s democracy.
“Orbán is setting up this huge barrier to anyone interfering in Hungarian elections, but Orbán’s interfering in all sorts of other countries’ elections,” said Kim Scheppele, a Princeton sociologist and Hungary expert.
Orbán is one of a small group of conservative populists who have publicly aligned themselves with U.S. conservatives trying to oust Biden in November. Last month, Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele and Argentine President Javier Milei spoke at the Conservative Political Action Conference just outside Washington. Orbán was a featured speaker at the 2022 event, after which he met Trump at the former president’s New Jersey golf course.
Several conservative populists have won European elections in recent years, including in Italy and Sweden. But leaders in those countries have remained staunch opponents of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, not battled with the European Union government or taken steps that alarm democracy advocates as Orbán has.
Scheppele said the parallels between Trump and Orbán go beyond ideology. She noted that Orbán is not very religious but has become a hero to Christian conservatives for his hardline stances, much like Trump.
The two men face a similar electoral quandary as well, she added.
“They’ve got the same problem,” Scheppele said. “How do you leverage a really solid base, which is not an actual majority, at election time?”
Riccardi reported from Denver and Spike from Budapest. Associated Press political writer Jill Colvin in New York contributed to this report.
Sweden finally joins NATO, ending non-alignment, in Ukraine war shadow
Shaun Tandon – March 7, 2024
An empty mast at NATO headquarters, ahead of a flag-raising ceremony for new member Sweden (JOHN THYS)
Sweden on Thursday became the 32nd member of NATO, turning the page on two centuries of non-alignment and capping two years of tortuous diplomacy after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine triggered new fears.
Days after Hungary followed key holdout Turkey and became the last NATO member to sign off, Sweden ceremonially handed over accession documents to the United States, the leading force of the transatlantic alliance that promises joint security for all.
Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson late Thursday attended as a guest at the annual State of the Union address of President Joe Biden, whose rival Donald Trump has disparaged NATO as unfairly burdening the United States.
“Mr Prime Minister, welcome to NATO, the strongest military alliance the world has ever seen,” Biden said as he recognized Kristersson, who sat in the gallery next to First Lady Jill Biden.
Biden urged the House leadership of the Republican Party to move on billions of dollars in military aid to Ukraine, saying, in a dig at Trump, that “I will not bow down” to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“If anybody in this room thinks Putin will stop at Ukraine, I assure you he will not,” Biden said.
– ‘Victory for freedom’ –
Kristersson, at an accession ceremony at the State Department, called joining NATO “a major step but, at the same time, a very natural step.”
“It’s a victory for freedom today. Sweden has made a free, democratic, sovereign and united choice to join NATO,” he said.
He later delivered a televised address to the nation from Washington, telling Swedes: “We are a small country, but we understand more than most the importance of the greater world beyond our borders.”
Secretary of State Antony Blinken said few would have expected Sweden as well as Finland to join NATO before Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
There is “no clearer example than today of the strategic debacle that Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has become for Russia,” Blinken said.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky also hailed Sweden’s membership, saying: “One more country in Europe has become more protected from Russian evil.”
– Overcoming Turkish reluctance –
Sweden has not fought in a war since the Napoleonic conflicts of the early 19th century.
Sweden and Finland, while militarily intertwined with the United States and both members of the European Union, had historically steered clear of joining NATO, formed in the Cold War to unite against the Soviet Union.
Finland and Sweden launched a joint bid quickly after the invasion of Ukraine, which itself had unsuccessfully sought to join NATO.
Finland successfully joined in April 2023, but Sweden’s membership was stalled by Turkey.
“Good things come to those who wait,” Blinken said as he received the documents from Sweden.
Russia has vowed “countermeasures” over Sweden’s entry into NATO, especially if the alliance’s troops and assets deploy in the country.
Sweden’s blue and yellow flag is expected to be hoisted on Monday at the Brussels headquarters of the North Atlantic Treaty Alliance.
Before agreeing to ratify membership, Turkey used its leverage to press Sweden, known for its liberal asylum policies, to crack down on Kurdish militants who have campaigned against Ankara.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan later demanded action after protesters, enjoying Swedish laws on free speech, desecrated Islam’s holy book the Koran.
In a clear if unstated sweetener, the United States dangled the sale of F-16 warplanes to Turkey, which has faced the wrath of US sanctions over an earlier major military purchase from Russia.
The Biden administration in January approved $23 billion in F-16 warplanes for Turkey swiftly after it ratified Sweden’s membership.
The United States simultaneously pushed ahead with $8.6 billion in more advanced F-35 jets for Greece, a fellow NATO member and historic adversary of Turkey.
Even after Turkey’s blessing, Sweden faced another obstacle as it needed approval of a last country — Hungary, whose nationalist prime minister, Viktor Orban, has often thumbed his nose at Western allies.
The Hungarian parliament ratified Sweden’s membership on February 26. But in one last hiccup, Hungary could not sign the accession document due to a brief absence in the mostly ceremonial post of president, after an Orban ally resigned over pardoning a convicted child abuser’s accomplice.
