President Joe Biden will close out his five-day trip to Europe on Thursday standing alongside Nordic leaders
President Joe Biden will close out his five-day trip to Europe on Thursday standing alongside Nordic leaders in an effort to show NATO’s expanding power and influence against a burgeoning Russia.
The brief stop in the shoreline Finnish capital is the coda to a Biden tour that was carefully sketched to highlight the growth of the military alliance that the president says has fortified itself since the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Finland joined as NATO’s newest member earlier this year, an entry that effectively doubled the alliance’s border with Russia.
Biden arrived in Helsinki after what he deemed a successful annual NATO summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, where allies agreed to language that would further pave the way for Ukraine to join the military alliance. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called the summit’s outcome “a significant security victory“ for his country but nonetheless expressed disappointment Kyiv did not get an outright invitation to join NATO.
