Sweden: Siltanews – News Desk
Sweden will donate 18 Archer artillery units and five Arthur counter-battery radar systems to Ukraine as part of its 18th aid package for Kyiv.
The total value of the donations is 3 billion kronor ($296 million), with deliveries of Arthur systems planned to begin this year and Archer systems in 2026.
Additional Archer artillery systems from BAE Systems Bofors will complement the eight already delivered.
Russia poses the greatest threat to Sweden due to its aggressive attitude towards the West, the Scandinavian nation’s security service Sapo has said.
It wrote in its annual report that while Sweden joining the Nato military alliance had strengthened its security, it had also led to increased Russian intelligence activity. Russia denies any wrongdoing.
Sapo also said that the security situation in Sweden was serious – with foreign powers operating in more threatening ways, with hybrid warfare, alongside incidents of violent extremism.
Charlotte von Essen, the head of Sapo, said there was a “tangible risk that the security situation can deteriorate further” in a way that may be hard to predict.
Sweden became a Nato member last year, seeing it as the best guarantee against Russia following its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022
That January, its civil defense minister warned “there could be war in Sweden” in the near future due to Russian aggression.
Sapo said on Tuesday that Russia’s intelligence activities were primarily aimed at undermining cohesion between Nato members, counteracting Western support for Ukraine, and circumventing sanctions.
It said these activities showed Russia was becoming “increasingly offensive and risk-prone” in the face of a build-up of Swedish, and wider European, defenses.
“When gathering intelligence, the Russian security and intelligence services use a wide range of resources and different platforms,” the agency wrote, adding that these activities had been limited by expelling intelligence officers.
Ms von Essen said Swedes needed to be vigilant about “widespread anti-state narratives and conspiracy theories” that seek to act as a destabilizing force, adding that it was “important that we do not normalize the new situation”.
In its report, Sapo mentioned suspicious incidents involving infrastructure and which countries may have been behind them “in some cases”.
A series of undersea cables and gas pipelines have been damaged in suspected attacks since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, prompting Nato to launch a monitoring mission in the sea.
The latest such breach was reported last month near Gotland – Sweden’s largest island.