Swedish Security Service: Russia, China, and Iran Pose Greatest Threats to Country's Security

The Swedish Security Service (Säpo) has published its annual report on the threats facing the country, which has been neutral for centuries and has now abandoned it and applied to join NATO following Russia's military invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022.

Sapo Director Charlotte von Essen said at a press conference that the security situation has been gradually deteriorating since Russia's full-scale attack on Ukraine in February 2022.

She stressed that we must learn to live with the situation. The terrorist threat level, which was raised to four on a five-point scale in August, will not be lowered in the near future. At the same time, Charlotte von Essen warns against normalising the dangerous situation.

"First and foremost, Russia, but also China and Iran continue to pose the greatest threat to Sweden, and they are working and to some extent also working together to change the current security system," said Charlotte von Essen, the head of the Swedish Security Service, when presenting the report.         

 Both the war in Ukraine and the bloody conflict between Israel and Hamas will continue to affect Sweden's security threats in the long term.             

"We all have to learn to live with a serious security situation," she added.

In a statement accompanying its report, the security service said that threats from both far-right and Islamist groups could be incited or exploited by Sweden's enemies abroad.

In August last year, the agency raised its terrorism threat rating to 4 from 3 on a 5-point scale. This happened after several incidents in which people in Sweden and neighbouring countries burned the Koran, outraging Muslims and prompting jihadist threats.

According to Säpo, both Russia and China are already engaged in activities that threaten security in northern Sweden. When Finland, and soon Sweden, join NATO, the alliance's frontier will expand into the Arctic regions. Both the Arctic and space are seen as arenas that need to be controlled with greater precision. The raw materials and location of the Arctic are attracting increasing interest from foreign countries.

The same goes for rapid technological development and AI.

In addition, Sweden's changing image as an Islamophobic country is also an increasing threat, von Essen said, referring to the tragic attack in Brussels where a Swede was killed simply because he was Swedish.

As The Gaze previously reported, a second Ukrainian basketball player, 18-year-old Artem Kozachenko, a victim of the terrorist attack in Germany, died in hospital today. He was admitted to hospital more than a week ago after a knife attack by teenage Islamic migrants on Ukrainian athletes on the basis of their nationality. 

The knife-wielding terrorist inflicted dozens of injuries on the boys simply because they were Ukrainians. During the attack in Düsseldorf on the evening of 10 February, the first 17-year-old Ukrainian basketball player of the youth national team, Volodymyr Yermakov, was killed, and his friend, Artem Kozachenko, who was seriously injured in the attack, remained in hospital until his death. 

According to German police, the attackers have been detained. The suspects are two migrants aged 14 and 15 from Gelsenkirchen and Herne. One of them, a 14-year-old German with Greek roots, was released as the suspicions against him were not confirmed. The other attacker, a 15-year-old German of Turkish origin, remains in custody.