President Joe Biden greets U.S. Ambassador to Finland Douglas Hickey as he arrives on Air Force One at Helsinki-Vantaan International Airport in Helsinki, Finland, Wednesday, July 12, 2023. Biden attended the NATO Summit in Vilnius, Lithuania and is visiting Helsinki for a meeting with 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.
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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.
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Biden and other administration officials also held what aides said were pivotal conversations with Ankara shortly before Turkey reversed course and dropped its objections to Sweden joining NATO.
“I’m feeling good about the trip,” Biden told reporters shortly before boarding Air Force One for Finland. “You know, we accomplished every goal we set out to accomplish.”
The president’s trip this week — a meticulously choreographed endeavor meant to showcase international opposition to Russian leader Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine — played out nearly five years to the day since then-President Donald Trump infamously stood alongside Putin in Helsinki and cast doubt on his own intelligence apparatus. That was just days after Trump tore through a NATO summit where he disparaged the alliance and from which he threatened to withdraw the United States.
In contrast, Biden has heartily embraced the tenets of multilateralism that Trump shunned, speaking repeatedly of having to rebuild international coalitions after four tumultuous years led by his predecessor. The garrulous former Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman is in his element at summits abroad, and speaks of how his background in international policy is proof positive that decades of experience on the world stage has mattered for the presidency.
While in Finland, Biden will meet with the country's president, Sauli Niinistö, as well as leaders from other Nordic nations including Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Iceland. Sweden is poised to join NATO as its 32nd member country after it pledged that it would cooperate more with Turkey on counterterrorism efforts while backing Ankara’s bid to join the European Union.
Biden is also scheduled to hold a press conference with Niinistö before departing for Washington.
