Swedish military intelligence said on Monday that the security situation in the Nordic countries and Europe following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was “the most serious” since the Cold War era in the early 1980s.
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“Security risks to Sweden have increased and threats to Sweden have become broader and more complex,” the Swedish Armed Forces said in a statement.
This assessment was presented in the annual security report of the Swedish Military Security and Intelligence Service (MUST).
“Today we have a situation of conflict and confrontation between Russia and the West, which is likely to worsen,” stressed the director of the military intelligence and security service Lena Hallin in the preamble to the report.
In her opinion, the security situation in Europe and in the region bordering Sweden is currently “the most serious since at least the early 1980s”.
Sweden and neighboring Finland broke decades of military non-alignment and declared themselves candidates for NATO membership in May 2022, following Russia’s offensive in Ukraine.
Sweden’s candidacy has met with opposition from Turkey, which has accused the Scandinavian country of harboring Kurdish fighters whom it calls “terrorists”, particularly those from the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).
Accession protocols for new NATO members must be ratified by all 30 members of the organization. Only Turkey and Hungary have not yet had the accession agreement between the two Nordic countries ratified by their parliament.
In its analysis, MUST noted that the situation was “more secure” for Sweden since submitting its application for NATO membership, noting that Stockholm had received bilateral security assurances from several countries around the world awaiting membership .
At the same time, MUST warned of an increased threat to Sweden from the activities of the Russian secret services.
Those activities include intelligence gathering by Russian spy services about Sweden’s future role in NATO and also Russia’s attempts to circumvent sanctions imposed by Western countries, she said, Ms Hallin said.
The “intelligence threat” refers to intelligence gathering by spies as well as cyberattacks or the use of other technologies.
Both Russia and China have “the ability to conduct complex operations to try to influence Sweden’s decisions in the political and economic sphere,” she stressed.