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rational security, chatter, law fair no bull, and the aftermath.

The LawFair is a very important issue.

Although, as you mentioned, the Swedish Prime Minister mentioned,

that the security situation is the gravest since the Second World War in Sweden.

And that is of course true, but on the other hand, the security situation is not as dire as we expected it to be.

Because Russia is simply so tied up in Ukraine that it has not had the ability and the capacity to intimidate Finland as we put pressure on these two countries.

At least in Finland, there was quite a strong expectation that this so-called grey area between application and membership could become quite difficult,

or it could turn out to be very difficult in terms of Russian disturbance attempts and all that.

But so far, it has not been the case. Life has continued.

It's usual come, come away in Finland.

And so there's this argument that because of this, we have time, so we should wait for the Swedish Whiten.

I'm David Pris, publisher of LawFair.

And this is the LawFair podcast for January 26, 2023.

Turkish President Erdogan has thrown a giant wrench into Sweden's NATO membership bid after a protest outside the Turkish Embassy in Stockholm.

This in turn affects Finland's application to the Alliance, because Sweden and Finland applied to and intended to join the Alliance concurrently.

I sat down with Mina Olander, Research Fellow at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs, to talk about how we got here,

about what Finnish leaders have been saying about these new developments, and about Pads Forward for Finland and NATO.

...