OSCE Chairperson-in-Office, Finnish Foreign Minister Elina Valtonen said NATO does not pose any threat to Russia and expressed hope for Ukraine to join the Alliance in the near future.

"We make it very clear in our messages, not just towards the American audience and to Mr. upcoming President Trump and his team, that there is no threat coming out of NATO. This is very much reflected in the everyday struggles of which people in your schools very closely follow the situation. It is very much a Russian long-used narrative of blaming NATO or the so-called expansion of NATO for its own aggression," Valtonen said at a press conference with her Ukrainian counterpart Andriy Sybiha, according to an Interfax-Ukraine correspondent.

She said NATO is a defensive alliance, which does not pose a threat to Russia. The Foreign Minister said in particular that Finland does not pose a threat to Russia as a NATO member or without NATO membership.

"Second thing is NATO does not expand by force. NATO expands when the free people in democratic nations choose to join. And this certainly happened in Finland and Sweden. And this one day and hopefully in the near future will happen for the Ukrainian people as well since they so choose. And that, again, is not a threat to anybody," the minister said.

President-elect Donald Trump said at a press conference in Mar-a-Lago, Florida, that he "could understand Russian feelings" over Ukraine's aspirations to join NATO and warned that the war could escalate. Trump criticized President Joe Biden's negotiating tactics with Ukraine and said that many mistakes were made in these negotiations.