LVIV, Ukraine — As Finland’s leaders dealt him a blow by announcing their support for joining NATO, Russian President Vladimir Putin reaffirmed his determination to maintain Moscow’s sway over eastern Ukraine as Russian forces pounded the area.
Putin, in a message released by the Kremlin on Thursday, offered his support to Leonid Pasechnik, the head of pro-Russia separatists in the self-proclaimed Luhansk People’s Republic, part of Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region.
“I am sure that through our joint efforts we will defend the independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity” of the Luhansk republic, Putin said, as his war on Ukraine began its 12th week.
The Russian leader’s message was backed by a torrent of Russian airstrikes and artillery barrages along the 300-mile-long eastern battlefront, including on a steel mill where the last pocket of Ukrainian military resistance remains in the strategic southeastern port city of Mariupol.
The fighting comes amid the dramatic announcement by Finland’s president and prime minister of their support for joining NATO, paving the way for an expansion of the U.S.-led military alliance that Putin partially blamed for his decision to invade Ukraine.
Finland, a historically neutral country that shares an 830-mile land border with Russia, is expected to be joined soon by Sweden in seeking membership in the 30-member security pact.
“NATO membership would strengthen Finland’s security,” President Sauli Niinisto and Prime Minister Sanna Marin said in a joint statement Thursday. “As a member of NATO, Finland would strengthen the entire defense alliance. Finland must apply for NATO membership without delay.”
The addition of the two Nordic states to NATO would underscore how badly Putin has miscalculated the world’s response to his incursion in Ukraine, which has failed to achieve its initial military objectives, prompted Europe to begin weaning itself off Russia’s most valuable export — fossil fuels — and compelled nonaligned states to pick sides.
“This is monumental,” said Aglaya Snetkov, a Russia expert and lecturer in international politics at University College London. “This reverses decades of foreign policy.
“Putin’s initial plan of drawing a line in the sand between Russia and NATO and reversing the latter’s expansion has spectacularly backfired,” she added. “This is precisely what Russia did not want: NATO expansion.”
The Kremlin responded by saying that Putin had already set in motion a strengthening of Russian defenses along its western flank. But Snetkov said Moscow would likely struggle to mount a significant response if Finland and Sweden joined NATO, given the vast deployment of Russian forces in Ukraine.
“It is bogged down in Ukraine, has pulled its troops from its other borders,” Snetkov said. “Realistically, what can it do? If it doesn’t respond, which I think is likely, this shows yet again the weakness of Russia and that it’s full of empty threats.”
More than a dozen Russian armored vehicles were destroyed crossing the Siversky Donets River near the village of Bilohorivka in Luhansk, according to the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense, which posted pictures on Facebook of charred tanks and the remnants of two pontoon bridges. The photos could not be independently verified.
The village was the target of a Russian strike over the weekend that hit a school-turned-shelter, killing about 60 civilians, according to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
The Ukrainian military said Thursday morning that it had repulsed nine Russian attacks over the last 24 hours in Luhansk and Donetsk, while admitting that Russian advances in the region had achieved “partial success.”
