A Swedish parliamentary defense committee report has claimed a Russian military attack against the Nordic country mustn't be excluded.
The report said that although parts of Russia's ground forces were tied up in the ongoing Ukraine conflict, other types of military attacks against Sweden could not be ruled out either.
"Russia's ability to carry out operations with air forces, naval forces, long-range weapons or nuclear weapons against Sweden remains intact," the report said. Russia's "ability to operate with special forces" was also stressed. Lastly, the report also ascribed a "high appetite for political and military risk" to Russia.
"The report is a clear signal to Russia. Now we are biting back with writings that are sharper than ever," one of the people behind the report told Swedish media, alluding to the name of the report, "A time of gravity," which echoes a rhetorical cliche from the World War II era.
The review outlined a new military doctrine for Sweden, based on NATO membership, in contrast to the previous one that relied on cooperation with fellow Nordic states and the European Union.
Having long been a partner of NATO and almost a member in all but name, Sweden decided to abandon the formal vestiges of non-alignment and applied to join the US-led military bloc together with neighboring Finland, citing changes in Europe's security landscape as a result of Russia's special operation in Ukraine. The race to join NATO saw remarkable shifts in Sweden's political world, including a U-turn by the national-conservative Sweden Democrats, who supported the move, despite having campaigned against NATO membership for decades.
However, Sweden's bid ran into opposition from Turkiye, which has accused Stockholm of harboring members of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), labeled as a terrorist group in both Ankara and the West. Relations deteriorated even further in early 2023 following a host of provocations, emanating from Sweden. Among others, Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan was hanged in effigy and a copy of Islam's holiest book, the Quran, was burned during a protest near the Turkish Embassy in Stockholm.
The Hungarian government, in turn, voiced grievances over Stockholm's past attacks against Prime Minister Viktor Orban, the ruling Fidesz party's politics and the overall state of democracy in Hungary. Budapest fired back at Stockholm's criticisms as unjustified and called on Sweden to refrain from "insults."
Sweden's Russophobia and Its Historic Roots
Like most Western states, Sweden scaled down its defense following the end of the Cold War. However, the Scandinavian country has made a U-turn and has gone on a defense spending spree, often resorting to the much-hyped and fictitious "Russia threat" to amplify its nation-under-threat storyline in order to justify the expenses, while seeking to meet NATO's threshold of 2% of GDP in 2026.
Over the past decade alone, the trumped-up "Russian threat" narrative has been used repeatedly as a justification for its military buildup, such as re-militarizing the Baltic island of Gotland after "identifying" it as a possible entry point for "Russian aggression," or bringing back conscription in order to rectify the drastic personnel shortages in a country that went from maintaining a 180,000-strong army during Cold-War era to under 20,000 service members today.
However, the anti-Russian rhetoric in Sweden goes deeper than the Cold War-era. Swedish rulers have been consistently fomenting anti-Russian sentiment from the 16th century onwards, when King Gustav Vasa designated Russia as an "inherited nemesis." Despite sharing a common heritage and history from the times of Ancient Rus, Sweden and Russia have from the Novgorodian era onwards fought dozens of wars, including over the control of the Gulf of Finland and surrounding territories.
With both sides having gained and lost territory in the early centuries, Russia had emerged as a clear winner from the Great Northern War (1700-1721) onwards, quelling Sweden's supremacy aspirations for good. This string of bitter losses, including ceding the Great Duchy of Finland to the Russian Empire in 1814, cemented the "enemy" image of Russians in Sweden's psyche.