Moscow, May 17 (TIWN) Russian President Vladimir Putin has said Moscow would respond if the NATO would deploy military infrastructure on the territories of Finland or Sweden.

Putin, Russia's paramount leader since 1999, has repeatedly cited the post-Soviet enlargement of the NATO alliance eastwards toward Russia's borders as a reason for the conflict of Ukraine.  But Putin, who has in recent months rattled Russia's nuclear sabre at the West over Ukraine, made an unusually calm response to Finland and Sweden's bids to join NATO, the biggest strategic consequence of Russia's invasion of Ukraine to date.  "As to enlargement, Russia has no problem with these states - none. And so in this sense there is no immediate threat to Russia from an expansion (of NATO) to include these countries," Putin told the leaders of a Russian-dominated military alliance of former Soviet states.  Putin, though, laced his newly found tranquillity on NATO with a warning.