Magnificent News: Today's WorldView: Did Putin inadvertently create a stronger NATO?

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By Adam Taylor
with Sammy Westfall

Did Putin inadvertently create a stronger NATO?

Russian President Vladimir Putin takes part in the Caspian Summit in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, on June 29. (Grigory Sysoyev/AFP/Getty Images)

Russia's invasion of Ukraine has resulted in at least one major change to the global order: NATO expansion. In Madrid on Wednesday, leaders of the military bloc's member states formally decided to invite Sweden and Finland to join NATO after Turkey agreed to drop its opposition.

This is bad news for one person in particular. As NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said Wednesday, Vladimir Putin "wanted less NATO," and now he's "getting more NATO on his borders."

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The alliance's creeping eastern border has been a sticking point for the Russian president for years. While Ukrainian membership was not in the cards anytime soon, Kyiv's growing relationship with the United States and other NATO powers has been used as a justification for Russia's decision to invade on Feb. 24.

Now, Ukraine is flush with weapons and other support from NATO member states. And if both Sweden and Finland ascend to membership, the balance of power in Europe has been further tipped against Russia. But while NATO will end up numerically stronger after Russia's invasion, the war in Ukraine has also brought some of the bloc's internal contradictions to the surface.

With an enemy to focus on, NATO has a renewed sense of purpose. Just three years ago, French President Emmanuel Macron complained it was facing "brain death." For years after the Soviet Union collapsed, NATO looked like a military alliance in search of an enemy. As many have recently brought up, Putin and others even suggested bringing Russia into NATO — effectively bringing Moscow into what was founded as an anti-Moscow pact.

There is no doubt after Russia's invasion of Ukraine which side NATO sees itself on, even if its members are not a direct party to the conflict. Even initial stragglers like Germany have found themselves swept up in support of Ukraine, supplying the country with heavy weaponry despite earlier concerns.

The shift extends beyond the political class, albeit unevenly. A recent Pew poll that looked at 11 NATO member states found that in Britain, Poland, the United States and Belgium, views of NATO had hit record highs. In only two countries, Greece and Italy, views have declined since the war in Ukraine started. Positive views of NATO membership also shot up in both Sweden and Finland before they applied to join.

The war will certainly strengthen NATO. Sweden and Finland both had, to varying degrees, histories of neutrality. Sweden, remarkably, hasn't fought a war since 1814 and Finland's policy of "Finlandization" during the Cold War has become a byword for a type of limited sovereignty designed to placate a larger power.

But both nations have long worked to ensure their security and have considerable military strength. Sweden brought back conscription in 2017, winding back a post-Cold War policy that had seen its military downsized. Finland, meanwhile, finalized the purchase of 64 F-35 fighter planes from U.S. company Lockheed Martin early this year, before Russia invaded Ukraine.

In terms of pure geography, if Finland joined NATO it would add another 800 miles to the military alliance's border with Russia. And NATO member states would control key areas in the Baltic Sea, including Sweden's Gotland island — not so far across the water from Kaliningrad, Russia's enclave in Europe.

Even outside of these potential member states, NATO will find itself militarily stronger after the war. President Biden announced a surge of forces toward the bloc's eastern flank, with U.S. military deployments that included a permanent headquarter in Poland, while Stoltenberg promises to build a new NATO rapid reaction force of 300,000. (Though some leaders were caught off guard by the NATO chief's mobilization announcement.)

The number of NATO member states that actually spend the target of 2 percent of gross domestic product on defense has significantly increased.

But even with an enemy, NATO is internally divided. Turkey, close to Russia on several key issues, only agreed to not veto the membership bids of Sweden and Finland late Tuesday. It gained some major concessions for doing so. Ankara is already seeking the extradition of alleged terror suspects — members of Kurdish groups or those linked to exiled Turkish cleric Fethullah Gulen — in return.

It may well get more, too: Politico reported Wednesday that there was also an implicit understanding Turkey may get F-16 fighter jets as a consequence of dropping its opposition.

Other problems lie beneath the surface. Pew's polling suggested drastically divergent views of NATO among the populations of its 30 member states, with a high of 89 percent approval in Poland but a dismal 33 percent in Greece. Even behind the united front on Ukraine, there are differences. France's Macron angered some of his NATO allies by warning publicly of the risk of humiliating Russia. Further divisions on weapons supplies, sanctions and the potential for Ukraine to join NATO are inevitable.

These divisions could certainly widen, especially if political winds change in member states. Former president Donald Trump, who aides have said discussed pulling the United States out of NATO, said in April that he threatened to abandon the military bloc's promise of collective security in a conversation with world leaders in 2018.

The focus on Russia could also ultimately distract from other aims. The leaders of Australia, Japan, New Zealand and South Korea attended the Madrid summit as observers, marking the first time that this Transatlantic alliance has brought over some of its trans-Pacific allies, too. A rewritten NATO Strategic Concept directly discussed China — a big change from the last document, which didn't mention the nation at all.

But while Moscow's frustrated military campaign in Ukraine has undermined preconceived conception's about Russian military strength, it may simultaneously suck attention away from the far greater long-term threat in China.

1,000 Words

On a summer day in India's Allahabad, people walk amid a sandstorm at Sangam, the confluence of the rivers Ganges, Yamuna and mythical Saraswat on June 28. (Sanjay Kanojia/AFP via Getty Images)

Developments from Ukraine

• A group of wives of Russian soldiers recorded an extraordinary video appeal to authorities to bring their men home alive. One of them called the war "unjust" in comments on social media and said authorities must take the blame for any more men killed. The appeal is a sign of desperation in a society where even the mildest criticism of Russia's war is criminalized.

• President Biden unveiled plans for an increased U.S. military presence in Europe. The new deployments are to include a permanent headquarters for the U.S. 5th Army Corps in Poland — a move Putin has long resisted — as well as the movement of two more F-35 fighter jet squadrons to the U.K..

• Russia and Ukraine each exchanged 144 soldiers in a swap that Ukrainian authorities called the largest prisoner exchange since the start of the Russian invasion. Ukraine's defense ministry said said 95 of the fighters it brought home had been captured from the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol. Forty-three of those fighters are members of the controversial Azov Regiment, the agency said.

• The United States has accused several companies and research institutes in China of supporting Russia's military. The Commerce Department said it was adding five of the companies to a trade blacklist. It also accused two already blacklisted Chinese research institutes of supporting Russia's military in recent weeks. Entities added to the list are effectively blocked from buying U.S. technology.

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Village by village

Alyona Kharaim and her daughter leave their house to get fresh milk. (Serhiy Morgunov for The Washington Post)

NATALYNE, Ukraine — At a school where Russian forces had set up a base in Ukraine's southern Kherson region, three of their armored personnel carriers remained on the property — for now. They were damaged when Ukraine's military recently forced the occupying soldiers back from this area. Over the weekend, three locals hammered at one vehicle to salvage spare parts.

The ground was still covered in fragments of ammunition. The other two vehicles were parked behind the building, in a field of lavender, a jarring contrast in the idyllic rural landscape.

The new Russian positions are just some three miles from this spot, but the makeshift mechanics appeared unconcerned. The day had passed quietly. Just one plume of smoke — an indication of an artillery strike — had appeared on the horizon all day. And it was on the Russian side of the front line.

With Moscow concentrating its efforts on taking territory in Ukraine's eastern Donbas region — battering cities, towns and Kyiv's troops with a near-constant barrage of artillery fire — Ukraine has been able to make steady gains in the south. Village by village, more of the strategically important Kherson region is returning to Ukrainian control — another sign that Russia's forces might be overextended with a front line that stretches about 300 miles.

Regaining control of Kherson, a rich agricultural region with Black Sea access, is critical for Ukraine. It's the only position the Russians hold west of the Dnieper River, and a prime position to launch any future offensive down the Black Sea coast to the major port city of Odessa. The Ukrainian counteroffensive is squeezing Russian positions from two directions — the west and the north.

"Here, you can hunt them," said a Ukrainian reconnaissance commander in the region whose call sign is "Makhno." "They've committed everything to the east."

Residents in the region say they have stopped spending every night in their underground hideouts. Shelling from the Russian-controlled side has not stopped, but people have simply grown used to it. Most of the Kherson region has been occupied since the first week of the war.

But holding the territory has proved challenging. Near the school in Natalyne, another village that had been considered a "gray zone" — a status for areas considered not completely controlled by either side — returned to Ukrainian control a week ago.

Mykola Kostitsyn, 66 near the garage that was recently hit by the Russian artillery in front of the his house in Kherson region, Ukraine, on June 25. (Serhiy Morgunov for The Washington Post)

For the roughly 75 people who stayed in town, the Russian occupiers went door to door and confiscated their phones, creating an information blackout for most. They didn't know the Ukrainians were successfully running counteroffensive operations on this front until the night the Russians suddenly pulled out, under pressure from Ukrainian artillery strikes.

The villagers said their daily life had not changed much, even with the Russians gone. Their home was still a war zone. Soldiers still patrolled the streets — only now they were wearing Ukrainian uniforms. The sounds of fighting remained loud and close.

"But I'd rather our guys be here than theirs," said Alyona Kharaim, who was out for a bike ride to pick up milk on Saturday afternoon with her husband and young daughter.

Along one gravel road leading here, children have set up their own pretend checkpoint for cars driving by. A 12-year-old girl playfully asked Washington Post journalists to say a code word — "palianytsia," a type of Ukrainian bread — before allowing them to pass. Ukrainian soldiers who saw this chuckled that the kids have apparently learned to regularly change the password — for security reasons, of course. One that they previously used was a crude quip about Russian President Vladimir Putin.

In the town of Novovorontsovka, at the northern boundary of the Kherson region, residents of one bombed-out apartment block covered neighbors' windows with plastic. The glass was shattered long ago. Most people had left town, but a handful stayed.

Mykola Kostitsyn, 66, held pieces of shrapnel in the palm of his hand. At first, bits of the artillery destroying his neighborhood were a novelty and people collected them. But now there is so much of it that no one cares anymore.

"Why bother collecting them?" he said. "There is more and more every day. How much of this stuff can you collect?" – Isabelle Khurshudyan