Finland's NATO membership adds a potent military to the alliance and a strategic puzzle piece that can better help defend its vulnerable eastern flank from potential Russian attacks.
NATO eastern flank members have called for a stepped-up US military presence in the region as they looked ahead to an alliance summit in Vilnius in July.
Russia's Wagner private military company claimed the capture of Ukraine's Bakhmut "in a legal sense," saying its units had taken the city administration building.