To protect its partners, NATO Supreme Allied Commander Gen. Tod Wolters ordered the response force. This activation of the response force means that any attack on a NATO member will be met with resistance from this multinational force. The mobilisation of this multinational force does not imply that NATO forces will enter Ukraine to defend it against invasion. The US president, Joe Biden, has made it clear that the US will not enter Ukraine to confront Russia. Wolters said, “This is an historic moment and the very first time the Alliance has employed these high readiness forces in a deterrence and defense role. They represent a flexible, combat credible force that can be employed in multiple ways and we are utilizing fully their inherent agility”. “We must stand ready to do more, even if it means we have to pay the price, because we are in this for the long haul,” he said. “We have to take this seriously, and that’s exactly why we are now deploying the NATO response force for the first time in a collective defense context,” he said. The Russian Foreign Ministry declared on Friday that if the US and its allies “pull” Finland and Sweden into Nato, Moscow will be compelled to intervene. However, Finalnd’s president dismissed it, adding, “we’ve heard this before.” Haavisto in an interview with the Finnish public broadcaster YLE said, “We don’t think that it calls for a military threat”. He added, “Should Finland be NATO’s external border, it rather means that Russia would certainly take that into account in its own defense planning. I don’t see anything new as such” in the statement delivered by Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova”.
