in ukraine leaders in the self-declared donesk region say they will demolish a steel plant used by ukrainian forces and civilians during an 11-week standoff in mariupol.
The ukrainian military ends operations in that key city of mario bowl and it's focusing its defense in other regions of the country now some troops captured by russian forces are still being detained now.
This all comes as finland and sweden have now both submitted their applications to join nato a move russia has called provocative president biden will welcome finland's president and sweden's prime minister to the white house tomorrow finland's under secretary of state for national security and foreign policy says his country comes ready to contribute.
i think we we have a credible uh deterrence uh after the cold war many countries started to demobilize so especially in europe we we didn't we always maintained a credible uh defense credible threshold all right let's bring in max bergman for more on this now he is the europe program director for the center for strategic and international studies max welcome great to have you with us so of course we are seeing this process move rather quickly still it is far from a done deal can you break down for us why finland and sweden are moving with such haste to join nato well i think you actually have to go back to russia's invasion of ukraine uh not in february but in 2014. i think that began to really shift attitudes in uh sweden and finland you saw especially in sweden defense uh suddenly becoming a major priority and then when russia uh invaded ukraine for a second time uh and and sought to decapitate the ukrainian regime.
i think that uh told everyone in sweden and finland that that now was the time to try to join nato now i think previously uh sweden and finland were sort of had this strategic ambiguity they were members of the eu they worked very closely with the united states with nato countries but weren't official members so the article 5 commitment which was that an attack on one is an attack on all didn't apply to them necessarily and so joining nato is sort of removes that strategic ambiguity and enables them to have closer ties with with the nato alliance and max turkish president erdogan says he's not sure that two countries should be allowed to join the alliance can you talk to us about why he's opposed to them joining well i think this is the big mystery right now where turkey is claiming that they want a stronger action from sweden and finland when it comes to uh dissident kurds that are in in their countries and in dissident turks but a lot of the speculation here is that turkey just sees that by holding up the process that maybe it can gain leverage maybe with these countries maybe with the united states effort to acquire certain weapon systems maybe you can get a phone call from president biden it's sort of unclear what how strong turkey's objection is we've seen president erdogan come out and and publicly say that he had concerns so i think there's gonna be a lot of backroom negotiations and hopefully this will just be resolved.
when you speak to people who live in finland and you live in you know sweden and some of these countries.
They're used to little military provocation provocations by russia and i wonder if finland is accepted by nato for instance that would increase the length of shared border between the alliance and russia by more than double what implications might that have not just for the war but for their relationship with their neighbors moving forward well you're right so finland has an incredibly long border with russia of course they were invaded by the soviets during world war ii or prior to world war ii uh so finland has has long been very concerned about what about the threat of russia but russia also has to be concerned about about the threat posed by finland and nato uh and so i i think that this this sort of goes both ways in in the case of sweden uh i think this is really fundamentally about re about reintegrating uh sweden and finland into kind of the overall defense architecture of europe and i think it definitely changes things in how these two countries which have a lot of capabilities a lot of wealth uh they have uh forces that are are ready to deploy they have advanced weapon systems that that now becomes an asset for nato overall that if it had to defend not just finland but the baltic states uh to the south so i think this really uh would reinforce european security uh and is a real blow to vladimir putin it represents a real strategic own goal that invading ukraine has become max bergman thank you very much for joining us thank you
