Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson has handed over Sweden's instruments of accession to NATO to US Secretary of State Antony Blinken at a ceremony in Washington.
"Good things come to those who wait," said Blinken. "With receipt of this instrument of accession let me be the very first to welcome Sweden as a party to the Washington Treaty and the 32nd member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization," he said.
"This has been a little bit of a road but I think we've known from day one that we would be here today, and now we are," he said..
There is "no clearer example than today of the strategic debacle that Putin's invasion of Ukraine has become for Russia," he said, referring to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
