‘Step by step’

Russian setbacks bolster Kyiv as NATO expansion looms

Finland’s government declared a “new era” is underway after announcing its intention to seek NATO membership, hours before Sweden’s governing party on Sunday backed a plan to join the transAtlantic alliance amid Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Russia has long bristled about NATO moving closer to its borders, so the developments will further anger Moscow. President Vladimir Putin has already warned his Finnish counterpart Saturday that relations would be “negatively affected.”

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, speaking Sunday after top diplomats from the alliance’s 30 member states met in Berlin, said the process for Finland and Sweden to join could be very quick. He also expressed his hope that Ukraine could win the war as Russian military advances appear to be faltering.

In Finland, President Sauli Niinisto and Prime Minister Sanna Marin made the announcement that their country would seek membership in NATO during a joint news conference at the Presidential Palace in Helsinki. The previously neutral Nordic country shares a long border with Russia.

“This is a historic day. A new era begins,” Niinisto said.

The Finnish parliament is expected to endorse the decision in a matter of days. A membership application will then be submitted to NATO headquarters in Brussels soon after.

Sweden, also non-aligned, moved closer to applying for NATO membership after the governing Social Democratic party met Sunday and backed joining the alliance.

The plan to join the alliance will be discussed in Sweden’s parliament on Monday, and Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson’s Cabinet will make an announcement later that day.

“Our 200-year-long standing policy of military nonalignment has served Sweden well,” Andersson said during a news conference in Stockholm late Sunday. “But the issue at hand is whether military nonalignment will keep serving us well?”

“We’re now facing a fundamentally changed security environment in Europe.”

NATO’s secretary-general, meanwhile, sought to highlight Russian setbacks, which he said may portend a victory for Ukraine.

“Russia’s war in Ukraine is not going as Moscow had planned,” Stoltenberg said by video link to the NATO meeting in Berlin as he recovers from a COVID-19 infection.” “They failed to take Kyiv. They are pulling back from around Kharkiv. Their major offensive in Donbas has stalled. Russia is not achieving its strategic objectives.”

“Ukraine can win this war,” he said, adding that NATO must continue to step up its military support to the country.

Sweden has also already taken steps toward joining the alliance, while Georgia’s bid is again being discussed despite warnings from Moscow about the consequences if its neighbour becomes part of NATO.

Nordic NATO member Norway said it strongly welcomed Finland’s decision to seek membership. Norwegian Foreign Minister Anniken Huitfeldt described Helsinki’s move as “a turning point” for the Nordic region’s defence and security policies.

Almost three months after Russia shocked the world by invading Ukraine, its military faces a bogged-down war, the prospect of a bigger NATO and an opponent buoyed Sunday by wins on and off the battlefield.

Top diplomats from NATO met in Berlin with the alliance’s chief and declared that the war “is not going as Moscow had planned.”

“Ukraine can win this war,” NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said, adding that the alliance must continue to offer military support to Kyiv. He spoke by video link to the meeting as he recovers from a COVID-19 infection.

On the diplomatic front, both Finland and Sweden took steps bringing them closer to NATO membership despite Russian objections. Finland announced Sunday that it was seeking to join NATO, citing how the invasion had changed Europe’s security landscape. Several hours later, Sweden’s governing party endorsed the country’s own bid for membership, which could lead to an application in days.

If the two non-aligned Nordic nations become part of the alliance, it would represent an affront to Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has cited NATO’s post-Cold War expansion in Eastern Europe as a threat to Russia. NATO says it is a purely defensive alliance.

While Moscow lost ground on the diplomatic front, Russian forces also failed to make territorial gains in eastern Ukraine.

Ukraine said it held off Russian offensives in the east, and western military officials said the campaign Moscow launched there after its forces failed to seize Kyiv has slowed to a snail’s pace.

Ukraine, meanwhile, celebrated a morale-boosting victory in the Eurovision Song Contest. The folk-rap ensemble Kalush Orchestra won the glitzy pan-European competition with its song “Stefania,” which has become a popular anthem among Ukrainians during the war.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy vowed that his nation would claim the customary winner’s honour of hosting the next annual competition.

“Step by step, we are forcing the occupiers to leave the Ukrainian land,” Zelenskyy said.

The band’s frontman, Oleh Psiuk, said at a news conference Sunday that the musicians were “ready to fight” when they return home. Ukraine’s government prohibits men between 18 and 60 from leaving the country, but the all-male band’s six members received special permission to go to Italy to represent Ukraine in the contest.

They will return to a country still fighting for survival.

Russian and Ukrainian fighters are engaged in a grinding battle for the country’s eastern industrial heartland, the Donbas. Ukraine’s most experienced and bestequipped soldiers have fought Moscow-backed separatists in the east for eight years.

Even with its setbacks, Russia continues to inflict death and destruction across Ukraine. Over the weekend, its forces hit a chemical plant and 11 highrise buildings in Siverodonetsk, in the Donbas, the regional governor said. Gov. Serhii Haidaii said two people were killed in the shelling and warned residents still in the city to stay in underground shelters.

Russian missiles destroyed “military infrastructure facilities” in the Yavoriv district of western Ukraine, near the border with Poland, the governor of the Lviv region said.

Lviv is a major gateway for the western-supplied weapons

Ukraine has acquired during the war.

The Ukrainian military said it held off a renewed Russian offensive in the Donetsk area of the Donbas. Russian troops also tried to advance near the eastern city of Izyum, but Ukrainian forces stopped them, the governor of Ukraine’s Kharkiv region, Oleh Sinegubov, reported.

The Ukrainian claims could not be independently verified, but western officials also painted a sombre picture for Russia.

Britain’s Defence Ministry said in its daily intelligence update that the Russian army had lost up to onethird of the combat strength it committed to Ukraine in late February and was failing to gain any substantial territory.

“Under the current conditions, Russia is unlikely to dramatically accelerate its rate of advance over the next 30 days,” the ministry said on Twitter.

The assessments of Russia’s war performance came as Russian troops retreated from around Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, which was a key military objective earlier in the war and was bombarded for weeks. The regional governor said there had been no shelling in the city for several days, though Russia continued to strike the wider region.

After failing to capture Kyiv, Putin shifted the invasion’s focus to the Donbas, aiming to seize territory not already occupied by the Moscow-backed separatists.

In the southern Donbas, the Azov Sea port of Mariupol is now largely under Russian control, except for a few hundred Ukrainian troops who have refused to surrender and remain holed up in the Azovstal steel factory.