Sweden deploys ships for NATO patrol in the Baltic

Faced with the persistent threat from Russia, Sweden has decided to send up to three warships and a surveillance aircraft to protect underwater infrastructure in the Baltic Sea.

Sweden will provide up to three warships and an aircraft to monitor critical infrastructure in the Baltic Sea and Russia’s “ghost fleet”, its prime minister announced on Sunday. This decision follows recent submarine cable ruptures.

“The (Swedish) government has asked the Swedish armed forces to provide up to three warships and an air and maritime surveillance aircraft, the ASC890.said Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson.

A meeting in Helsinki is expected

Leaders of NATO countries bordering the Baltic Sea will meet in Helsinki on Tuesday to discuss security in the region, with the expected presence of NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte.

The meeting will focus on “strengthening NATO’s presence in the Baltic Sea and responding to the threat posed by Russia’s ghost fleet,” Finnish President Alexander Stubb explained last week.

Finland said NATO would send two ships, while The British-led Joint Expeditionary Force (JEF), which includes the Nordic and Baltic states as well as the Netherlands, announced on Monday that it would strengthen its surveillance of underwater infrastructure in the Baltic Sea.

Sweden is ‘not at war’ but not at peace

Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said on Sunday that his country was “not at war” but was not going through a period of peace either. He talks about hybrid attacks and a proxy war waged on his soil.

“Sweden is not at war, but there is no peace either. True peace is freedom and the absence of serious conflicts between countries. he said at the annual Folk och Defense Forum in Salen, central Sweden.

“This security situation and the fact that strange things continue to happen in the Baltic lead us to believe that hostile intentions cannot be ignored”also estimated the manager.

Russia is sabotaging

Several electricity and telecommunications cables have been damaged in the Baltic in recent months.

These degradations, targeting energy and communication infrastructures, are part, according to experts and political leaders, in the context ofa “hybrid war” led by Moscow against Western countries, in this vast maritime space bordered by several NATO members and by Russia.

The Eagle S, flying the flag of the Cook Islands, an oil tanker suspected of belonging to the Russian “ghost fleet” and of having damaged an electric cable and four telecommunications cables between Finland and Estonia on December 25, has just been be prohibited from navigation.

Sweden and Finland, which recently joined NATO, are particularly attentive to recurring incidents in the Baltic Seawhere tension has risen since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

A bulk carrier flying the Chinese flag, the Yi Peng 3, is also in the sights of Swedish justice in the investigation into the rupture on November 17 and 18 of two telecommunications cables in Swedish waters.

The Russian threat is long-term

The Swedish Prime Minister did not point the finger at any country’s responsibility for the damaged cables during his speech.

But speaking more generally about hybrid attacks in the region he said:

The Swedish government “takes this situation seriously”, believing that the country was living “in an era of proxy war”.

“Iran is using organized criminal gangs to carry out serious proxy attacks on us,” he also said. At the end of May, the Swedish intelligence agency Säpo had accused Iran of recruiting Swedish criminal gang members to commit “acts of violence” against Israeli and other interests in Sweden, which Iran has denied. (tib/ats)