It was a bad day for Vladimir Putin and one of his strategic goals.
He says he is waging this war in part because of the threat of NATO expansion.
He now has thousands more NATO troops on their way to border countries and two once staunchly neutral countries joining the ranks of the alliance.
Sweden and Finland will now join NATOalarmed by what happened to Ukraine at the hands of the Russian invasion.
Their application will be submitted as soon as possible, which must be infuriating for Ukrainians who also want to join the alliance, even though they know it will probably never happen anytime soon.
And there are questions about the price paid by Sweden and Finland and possibly other alliance members to overcome Turkey’s objections to joining.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said he got everything he wanted from the membership talks.
Above all, the Turks wanted promises from the Swedes and Finns over the Kurds.
The Turks say the two countries have agreed to cooperate fully with Turkey on the PKK, the militant group that has been fighting for an independent Kurdish homeland in Turkey since the 1980s.
But they say Sweden and Finland have also agreed not to support the YPG, the mainly Kurdish group that has led the fight against Islamic State in northern Syria in alliance with the west. Turkey considers them terrorists.
The Turks claim that the two countries have agreed on “intelligence sharing in the fight against terrorism and organized crime”.
To what extent will this include collecting intelligence on Kurds?
There are 100,000 people in the Kurdish diaspora in Sweden, including PKK supporters.
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Turkey wasted no time in seeking the extradition of 33 Kurds from Finland and Sweden calling them suspected terrorists.
Kurds also fear the deal will be seen by Turkey as a green light to renew attacks on the Kurdish enclave of Rojava in northern Syria.
The Turkish president recently threatened to launch a new invasion into northern Syria to retake towns held by the YPG.
The United States sees the group as an important ally. Turkey sees him as an extension of the PKK.
