Sweden is sharply increasing its defense budget

The Swedish defense must be strengthened. Minister of Defense Peter Hultqvist announces the largest rearmament in decades.

The focus of the initiative is the army, which will be represented throughout the country.

On Thursday, the Swedish government presented its plan for the defense in the period 2021 to 2025. It lays the foundation for a new organization that will be in place in 2030.

The defense budget will be increased to 89 billion Swedish kroner in 2025, an increase of 29 billion from this year’s level.

The government believes that the security policy situation in the immediate area has deteriorated, and points out Russia as the country that characterizes the threat picture.

– And signal

– The total defense must therefore be strengthened, Hultqvist said at a press conference on Thursday.

He pointed to Russian aggression against Georgia, where the regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia are under Russian control. Hultqvist also mentioned Russia’s annexation of the Crimean peninsula, the protracted conflict in Ukraine, the country’s extensive exercises and reconstruction on the Kola Peninsula, the North Atlantic and the Baltic Sea.

– This is a signal to the Swedish people, a signal to our partners and to the immediate area, said the Minister of Defense.

The goal is for Sweden to survive in war and crisis for three months, until international aid arrives. When this goal is achieved, Hultqvist could not say.

– How long we manage a crisis or conflict situation has to do with the type of situation in question, he said.

Sweden is not a member of the NATO defense alliance.

Error

The Minister of Defense believes that the Swedish disarmament that was initiated in the 2000s and lasted until 2015 went too far and was a mistake.

He warns future politicians against making the same mistake again, and stresses that it takes a long time to rebuild military capacity.

– If the security policy sun starts to shine a little more and the climate improves – do not rust down! says Hultqvist.

The proposal that was presented on Thursday means that the Swedish Armed Forces’ war organization will grow from the current 60,000 positions to 90,000 in 2030. This also includes civilian employees and the Home Guard.

Several disbanded units will be restored to train more soldiers, and the number who will serve first-time service will increase to 8,000 annually from 2025. This is a doubling compared to 2019.

Increased military readiness

In August, the Swedish Armed Forces carried out an operation in the Baltic Sea and on Gotland, and the situation was described as more tense than in a long time.

The Swedish intelligence expert Johan Wiktorin wrote on Twitter that he had not experienced a similar increase in emergency preparedness since the so-called August coup in the then Soviet Union in 1991.

The aim of the increased activity was to strengthen monitoring in the southeast and in central parts of the Baltic Sea in the air and at sea.

Sweden increased military preparedness in the Baltic Sea due to an exercise with three large Russian landing craft off Gotland, according to Dagens Nyheter.

Three vessels of the Ropucha class passed east of Gotland. According to the newspaper, it was this exercise, combined with the crisis in Belarus, that caused the Swedish authorities to react.

Swedish naval vessels were sent to the area, and ground forces were deployed on Gotland. Minister of Defense Peter Hultqvist said that the escalation was a signal to Russia.

– Extensive military operations are underway in the Baltic Sea region, both Russian and Western, in some places in a way we have not seen since the Cold War, said Jan Thörnqvist, who leads the Swedish effort.

(NTB/TV 2)