Did Finland vote to join NATO? No, that's not true: The Finnish Embassy in Washington, D.C., told Lead Stories that such a decision has not been made yet. Finland and Sweden plan to submit their NATO applications in May 2022, according to The Guardian, but Finnish parliamentary groups had not officially voted on this issue at the time of writing.
The claim appeared in a tweet (archived here) on April 24, 2022. It opens:
BREAKING: Finnish Parliament has voted to join NATO against Russia's strongest warnings! 112 of 200 MPs voted in favor. Russia: 'We have issued our warnings publicly & bilaterally. Both Sweden & Finland know this & will not be surprised about where their decision will lead.'
This is what the post looked like on Twitter at the time of writing:
(Source: Twitter screenshot taken on Tue Apr 26 14:02:49 2022 UTC)
The Twitter user does not cite any sources for the claims made in the tweet above.
Lead Stories emailed the Finnish Embassy in Washington about this claim. A press counselor for the embassy responded on April 26, 2022, with:
That is not true. Finland has not taken a decision on NATO membership.
The issue is currently under debate in the Parliament.
According to a Reuters article, Finnish parliamentary groups approve of joining some type of military alliance in response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine. No official moves toward this outcome had been made at the time of writing.
Both Sweden and Finland have agreed to submit applications to be part of NATO, according to The Guardian, which cited Nordic media. They have not submitted the applications yet, but plan to in May 2022.
Other Lead Stories fact checks related to the 2022 Russia-Ukraine conflict can be found here.
