 Swedish and Finnish troops practiced carrying out amphibious operations south of Stockholm on Friday as part of the largest national defense exercise of its kind in Sweden in 25 years. The maneuvers, which saw Finnish and Swedish troops practicing working together during operations, were a part of Aurora 23, an exercise that launched across Sweden on April 17 with some 26,000 personnel taking part in troops from 14 nations, including the United States, Britain and France participating. Aurora 23 involves drills on land in the air and its sea and is aimed at helping Sweden boost its home defense and ability to work with international partners, the Swedish military said in its press release. The Aurora 23 exercise is taking place across Sweden with forces from the USA, Great Britain, Finland, Poland, Norway, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Ukraine, Denmark, Austria, Germany and France. It's very good that Finland is entering NATO, we expect to be second after them. So for us it's only good to have this exercise together with them and we will join NATO later. So it's not a problem for us, we are used to exercise together with Finnish. It's not that big, but if you look into the Baltic Sea region, that's why we need to cooperate. Even though Finland has joined NATO and we are waiting for the membership, it is of great importance. We think safer today when Finland has joined and we will feel even more safer when we are joining NATO. But before that, prior to that, we need to continue our great exercises which we have had so many decades back. It's even more important to do cooperation between Finland and Sweden when we both are in NATO in the future. So it's good, we have always done cooperation and I'm pretty sure that we are doing that in NATO also.