00:00Douglas, in Helsinki, the eastern front of NATO is warning that there is an impending danger from their Russian neighbor.
00:06Tell us more about this.
00:07Yeah, well, first of all, the location says it all, right?
00:09This is called a summit of the so-called eastern flank nations, and they're just that.
00:15It is the Nordic nations, seven of them, plus Finland, and one is Romania as well, eastern European country in there.
00:22What they all have in common is that they either share a maritime or a land border with Russia and Belarus.
00:30And they all see them as clear and present dangers, not down the road, now.
00:34And basically what they're doing is saying to Europe now, to the western European partners, we need extra defense money for ourselves to protect you, and we need it now.
00:46This is really a red flag they're holding up.
00:48You could say this is a group of small countries.
00:51There are only eight of them.
00:52It's not a big deal.
00:53The rest of Europe are the real military powers.
00:55But no, because they are literally on the front line there.
00:58They have long experience dealing with an aggressive Russia and a Soviet Union before that.
01:04And they say they know better than anyone what the real threat is.
01:07So they are basically getting together to try to do it.
01:10They don't think the rest of Europe is doing actively enough.
01:13And that is bolstering their defenses right now, building defense walls against what they see as a very potential, if not likely, Russian threat three to five years down the road, if and when a peace deal in Ukraine is struck.
01:27Douglas Herbert, our international affairs commentator, as always.
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