Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said on Sunday that his country was “not at war” but not at peace either, citing hybrid attacks and a proxy war being waged on its soil.
“Sweden is not at war, but not at 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. “We and our neighbors are subject to hybrid attacks that are not carried out with missiles or soldiers but with computers, money, disinformation and threats of sabotage”he continued. “This security situation and the fact that strange things continue to happen in the Baltic Sea lead us to believe that hostile intentions cannot be ruled out,” said Mr. Kristersson.
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 of a “hybrid warfare” led by Moscow against Western countries.
The Eagle S, flying the flag of the Cook Islands, an oil tanker suspected of belonging to the “ghost fleet” Russian and having damaged an electrical cable and four telecommunications cables between Finland and Estonia on December 25 has just been banned from navigation.
Sweden and Finland, which recently joined NATO, are particularly attentive to recurring incidents in the Baltic Sea, where tension has increased 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 regarding the rupture on November 17 and 18 of two telecommunications cables in Swedish waters.
The “Russian threat”
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 Russian threat is likely to be a long-term one. Just like our defense must be.” He added that the Swedish government took this situation “seriously”, believing that the country was living “in the era of proxy wars”. “Iran is using violent organized criminal gangs in Sweden to carry out serious proxy attacks in our country,” he also said.
At the end of May, the Swedish intelligence agency Säpo accused Iran of recruiting members of Swedish criminal gangs, including children, to commit “acts of violence” against Israeli interests among others in Sweden, which Tehran has denied.
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