Sweden’s Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said Sunday that his country is not at war, but it is not living in peacetime either, pointing to hybrid attacks, suspected sabotage in the Baltic Sea and proxy war. TASR informs about it according to a report of the AFP news agency.
Several undersea telecommunications and network cables have been cut in the Baltic Sea in recent months, which experts and politicians say is part of a hybrid war organized by Russia.
“Sweden is not at war, but not at peace either. True peace means freedom and no major conflicts between countries,” Kristersson said at the annual defense forum Folk och Försvar (Society and Defense) in the central Swedish town of Sälen.
“We and our neighboring countries are exposed to hybrid attacks that are not carried out with the help of missiles and soldiers, but with the help of computers, money, disinformation and threats of sabotage,” the prime minister specified.
They cannot rule out foreign interference
“The security situation and the fact that strange things are still happening in the Baltic Sea lead us to believe that hostile intentions cannot be ruled out,” he added.
Tensions over the Baltic Sea have been rising since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Kristersson did not name any specific country as responsible for the damaged cables, but spoke generally about hybrid threats in the region. The Swedish government “takes it seriously,” he emphasized.
In September 2022, a series of undersea explosions, the cause of which has not yet been determined, ruptured the Nord Stream gas pipeline, which transports Russian gas to Europe. In October 2023, the undersea gas pipeline between Finland and Estonia was shut down after it was damaged by the anchor of a Chinese cargo ship.
Kristersson also noted that Sweden is living “in the age of proxy wars”. “Iran is using organized criminal groups in Sweden to carry out serious attacks in our country,” declared the Prime Minister.
