Finland to join NATO on Tuesday
Finland became the 31st member of NATO on Tuesday, in a historic strategic shift provoked by Moscow's war on Ukraine, which doubles the US-led alliance's border with Russia.
Last year, the Kremlin's all-out invasion of Ukraine upended Europe's security landscape and prompted Finland- and it's neighbour Sweden - to drop decades of non-alignment.
Awkward allies Turkey and Hungary, for different reasons of their own, delayed Finland's bid to come under the NATO umbrella- and Stockholm's progress remains blocked.
But last week, the Turkish parliament voted to clear Finland's last hurdle.
Completing the ratification in well under a year still makes this the fastest membership process in the alliance's recent history.
All that remained were Tuesday's highly choreographed formalities at NATO headquarters.
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