Warship on sea – view through night vision. Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson delivered a worrying message on Sunday, January 12, warning that while Sweden may not be officially at war, it certainly isn’t living in times of peace.
Credit: Shutterstock, Raimundo79
Is Sweden in the midst of a new-age ‘Cold War’? ‘Sweden is not at peace.’
What’s happening in the Baltic? Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson delivered a grim warning to the world on Sunday, January 12: ‘Sweden is not at peace.’ It was a worrying message, warning that while Sweden may not be officially at war, it certainly isn’t living in times of peace. The Prime Minister was speaking at the annual Folk och Forsvar defence forum in Salen, central Sweden, when he highlighted the growing threat of hybrid warfare, with acts of sabotage and proxy wars threatening the country’s security.
“Real peace means freedom, and no serious conflicts between countries,” Kristersson said, but he admitted that Sweden’s situation is far from peaceful. He cited the rising number of underwater telecom and power cables being severed in the Baltic Sea – attacks experts suspect are part of a Russian-led hybrid war campaign.
The Baltic Sea has become a hotbed of strange incidents, fueling suspicions that hostile forces are lurking beneath the surface. On December 25, the Estlink 2 electricity cable, along with four telecom cables linking Finland and Estonia, were severed. This followed a similar attack in Swedish waters back in November 2024, when two telecom cables were damaged in the same region.
There are growing fears within Sweden and the rest of the region that the Baltic is becoming a new battlefield, fought not with guns, but with covert cyber strikes and economic pressures. Is this the new reality?
Tensions in the region have been escalating ever since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, and these recent attacks only add to the growing sense of unease. One of the most alarming incidents was the September 2022 rupture of the Nord Stream pipelines, which carried Russian gas to Europe. The cause of the blasts remains shrouded in mystery, but suspicions point to external forces trying to destabilise the region.
Then there was the October 2023 incident, when an undersea gas pipeline between Finland and Estonia was damaged by the anchor of a Chinese cargo ship. While Kristersson refrained from directly naming any one nation as responsible, he didn’t hold back in acknowledging the long-term threat posed by Russia, declaring the Russian threat to be a ‘serious and very likely long-term’ issue.
Hybrid warfare is the new norm: Death by a thousand papercuts
This is the age of proxy wars. Kristersson also revealed that Sweden was facing a threat on another front, with Iran allegedly using violent criminal gangs as proxies to carry out attacks on Swedish soil. In May 2023, Sweden’s intelligence agency Sapo accused Iran of recruiting Swedish gang members- some of them as young as children – to target Israeli and other interests within the country.
With these growing threats from both cyber-attacks and physical violence, Kristersson emphasised that Sweden’s government is not taking the situation lightly. “We are taking this seriously,” he said, as the country grapples with its new reality.
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