NATO should stop accepting new members, according to Henri Geno, who had served as an advisor to the French president from 2007 to 2012. 

"Doors to NATO should be closed," he said on BFM TV. "It’s unacceptable to include Finland, Sweden, Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia in the alliance."

Geno said that the US and the EU supervised and aided in the admission of Eastern European states to NATO, and pushed the alliance into transforming into an anti-Russian organization, consequently directing the advancement of EU borders to Russian borders.

Washington and Brussels surrounded Russia, creating "for the Russians a sense of encirclement that was at the heart of many European wars."

Read more: Russia warns of instability in Europe if Sweden, Finland join NATO

Nicolas Sarkozy's former advisor is convinced that the strategic partnership between the US and Ukraine, signed on November 10, 2021, "formalized an alliance between the two countries, clearly directed against Russia."

"Neither Churchill nor Roosevelt at the beginning of World War II thought that one day they would order mass bombing of German cities in order to break the spirit of the population," Geno continued. "When sending military advisers to Vietnam in 1961, US President John Kennedy did not imagine that eight years later America would keep half a million soldiers there, burn napalm and stand accused of exterminating entire villages."

He said, "The cold war did not turn into a third world war only because none of its actors tried to put the enemy in a stalemate." Now the US and its allies, according to Geno, are trying to "drive Russia into a corner."

"A return to diplomacy is the only way to prevent a slide into a global conflict," the former adviser said.

Finland, Sweden to apply for NATO, will "quickly" receive approval

NATO allies have been expecting Finland and Sweden to apply to join the military alliance in the coming days, and will grant membership quickly, according to diplomats and officials.

During the one-year ratification of their membership, NATO allies will be ramping up troop presence in the Nordic region, holding military exercises and naval patrols in the Baltic Sea while possibly rotating US and British forces in Finland and Sweden, according to the sources.

The two countries, however, will not be benefitting from NATO's collective defense clause; the clause entails that an attack on one ally is an attack on all allies. Finland and Sweden will benefit from the clause if the 30 member states unanimously support the decision. 

Norway, Denmark, and three Baltic states in the wider Nordic region are already NATO members.