re: What does the US gain by encouraging Sweden and Finland to join NATO?

Speaking at the Collective Security Treaty Organization’s summit in the Kremlin, Putin said that further NATO enlargement “is a problem that has been created completely artificially, since it is being done in the foreign policy interests of the United States.”

He added that the military bloc has been routinely used as a foreign policy instrument of one country – the US, but “quite persistently, skilfully and very aggressively.”