Swedish Defense Minister assured that he does not want to “appeal to fear”, but rather to the “conscience” of the population
Swedish Defense Minister Carl-Oskar Bohlin warned the country about the possibility of the neighboring war between Russia and Ukraine spreading to its territory.
“There could be war in Sweden,” the minister said on Sunday, in a speech at the annual Folk och Försvars security conference. “It is not my main intention to appeal to fear, but rather to your conscience.
I seek to open a door: a door that is often closed and confused by the demands and challenges of everyday life. A door that many Swedes may have kept closed their entire lives.
A door to a space where we are confronted with an important question: who are you if war comes?”, declared Bohlin. In the same speech, the minister considered that the President of Russia, Vladimir Putin, “did not realize that he was knocking down that door in every Ukrainian in 2014”.
“By the time we reached February 2022, at the start of the full-scale invasion, the Ukrainian people had, individually and collectively, been formulating their response: ‘We are a people, and a society, who will meet open war with open resistance ‘, and that’s what they did”, he cried.
Bohlin also warned that “everyone must understand” that in the current situation time can be “the most precious non-renewable resource”.
“If there’s one thing that keeps me awake at night, it’s the feeling that things are moving very slowly”, he warned, saying: “If you haven’t already started [a preparar-se]you are late – if you don’t know how, you can ask someone who has already started or get answers from the Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency.
It’s that simple.” In the aftermath of Russia’s large-scale invasion of Ukraine, which began in February 2022, Sweden has taken steps to strengthen its defense against the Russians, notably through its application to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization ( NATO), which has faced opposition from Turkey and Hungary, preventing its entry into the alliance.