The Russian leader is creating the very Western alliance he feared.
When Vladimir Putin began laying the groundwork for his invasion of Ukraine, he pointed to what he regards as the existential threat posed by the West encroaching farther into the post-Soviet space. Nearly two weeks into Putin’s devastating and costly invasion, that fear has turned into a self-fulfilling prophecy: The once-remote possibility of Ukraine joining the European Union and NATO now seems more plausible, and even in historically neutral countries such as Finland and Sweden (both of which are already EU members), public support for joining NATO has surged to record levels.
Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has primarily succeeded in materializing his worst fears: a unified West, a more militarized Europe, and a stronger, more attractive NATO. No matter how the invasion ends, this will be one of its legacies. Putin has demonstrated his willingness to violate the sovereignty of Russia’s neighbors, in full view of the world, with little regard for the consequences. Several of those neighbors are now justifiably asking themselves, Could we be next?
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This dramatic change has been particularly pronounced in Finland, where recent polls have found that, for the first time in the Nordic country’s history, a majority—albeit a narrow one, at 53 percent—supports joining NATO. This shift was sudden: In January, only 30 percent supported NATO accession. In addition to an 830-mile border, Finland and Russia share a long history and important economic ties. Although relations between the two haven’t always been perfect (Finland repelled a Soviet invasion in 1939), Finns didn’t consider themselves to be particularly threatened by their eastern neighbor—until now.
Moscow had already proved its willingness to violate the sovereignty of its neighbors when it invaded Georgia in 2008 and then when it illegally annexed Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula in 2014. But this time, Putin “has gone full monty,” Alexander Stubb, the former Finnish prime minister, told me. As Finland’s foreign minister and prime minister during those respective periods, Stubb said he and other Western leaders failed to heed the warnings: “We set sanctions but, with hindsight, they were not enough. I’ll be fully honest with you, I never thought he woul
