Sweden ‘not at war, but not at peace either’, says PM

STOCKHOLM: Sweden’s Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said Sunday his country was not at war but not living in peacetime either, citing hybrid attacks, suspected sabotage in the Baltic Sea and a proxy war fought on its soil.

Several underwater telecom and power cables have been severed in the Baltic Sea in recent months in incidents that experts and politicians say are part of hybrid war actions orchestrated by Russia.

“Sweden is not at war, but there is not peace either. Real peace means freedom and no serious conflicts between countries,” he told the annual Folk och Forsvar defence forum in Salen in central Sweden.

“We and our neighbouring countries are subjected to hybrid attacks that are not carried out with missiles and soldiers but with computers, money, disinformation and threats of sabotage,” he said.

“The security situation and the fact that strange things keep happening in the Baltic Sea lead us to believe that hostile intentions cannot be ruled out,” he said.

On Dec 25, the Estlink 2 electricity cable and four telecom cables linking Finland and Estonia were damaged, just weeks after two telecom cables in Swedish waters of the Baltic Sea were severed on Nov 17-18.

Tensions have mounted around the Baltic Sea since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in Feb 2022.

In Sept 2022, a series of underwater blasts ruptured the Nord Stream pipelines that carried Russian gas to Europe, the cause of which has yet to be determined.

In Oct 2023, an undersea gas pipeline between Finland and Estonia was shut down after it was damaged by the anchor of a Chinese cargo ship.

Kristersson did not single out any one country as responsible for the damaged cables.

But, speaking more generally about hybrid threats in the region, he said: “The Russian threat is very likely long-term. As our defence must be.”

He said the Swedish government was “taking this seriously”.

Kristersson also noted that Sweden was living “in the age of proxy wars.”

“Iran is using violent organised criminal gangs in Sweden to carry out serious attacks in our country by proxy.”

Sweden’s intelligence service Sapo in May accused Iran of recruiting Swedish criminal gang members, some of them children, as proxies to commit “acts of violence” against Israeli and other interests in the Scandinavian country.