Finnish brewery launches NATO beer to mark membership application

HELSINKI, Could 20 (Reuters) – A small Finnish brewery a number of dozen miles from the Russian border has launched a brand new beer to toast its nation’s utility to hitch the NATO army alliance.

The lager known as Otan olutta – the primary phrase a play on the French variation of the initials of North Atlantic Treaty Group.

The complete identify additionally means “I will have some beer” in Finnish.

The brew had “a style of safety with a touch of freedom,” Petteri Vanttinen, the chief government of family-run Olaf Brewing advised Reuters.

Finland and Sweden utilized to hitch NATO on Wednesday, a call spurred by their alarm over Russia’s invasion of one other neighbour, Ukraine. learn extra

Moscow initially threatened unspecified retaliation. “We’re beneath the bear’s arm right here, so to talk,” Vanttinen mentioned within the brewery in Savonlinna, Japanese Finland.

However nobody was panicking, he added. “We will have a beer now we have got this far within the course of. I consider it displays the Finnish mentality fairly nicely that we simply hold calm. There is no such thing as a trigger for alarm.”

The blue and white cans match NATO’s color scheme and present a knight holding up a foaming tankard of beer, with the alliance’s brand stamped on his armour.

The brewery is known as after the close by St. Olaf’s Fortress, a medieval stone fortress based in 1475 to defend Finland, then a hinterland of the Swedish kingdom, in opposition to invaders from the Novgorod republic, a predecessor of recent day Russia.

Reporting by Anne Kauranen; Enhancing by Andrew Heavens

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