Hungary ratified the Nordic country's NATO membership on Monday. MEPs overwhelmingly approved the Nordic country's entry into the military alliance. Should Turkey also ratify membership, as expected, Finland, which shares a border of around 1,300 kilometers with Russia, only has to complete a few technical steps before it can join the military alliance.

After the start of the Russian war of aggression in Ukraine, Sweden and Finland jointly applied to join NATO, thereby breaking with a long tradition of extensive military neutrality. The decision on Sweden's accession is still pending, as Turkey and Hungary have not yet agreed.

Turkey in particular is blocking Sweden's membership and is demanding tougher action from the government in Stockholm against Kurdish activists in the country, whom Ankara describes as "terrorists". Sweden still hopes to join the alliance in time for the NATO summit in Vilnius in July. Most experts assume that Turkey will only vote on Sweden's NATO membership after the country's parliamentary and presidential elections on May 14.

There was also resistance from Hungary last week. The spokesman for the right-wing Prime Minister Viktor Orban spoke of a "plethora of grievances", triggered among other things by Sweden's criticism of the rule of law in Hungary, which first has to be settled.

NATO was founded after World War II at the beginning of the Cold War as a counterweight to the Soviet Union. Since then, the alliance has gone through several waves of expansion, mainly to the east and south, which has brought it closer and closer to Russia's borders.

The accession of several countries that were once under Moscow's control angered the Kremlin and led to growing tensions with the West. Russian President Vladimir Putin cited the prospect of Ukraine's NATO membership as one of the main reasons for invading the neighboring country 13 months ago.