Sweden Democrats ‘have switched position on Nato’: Åkesson

The populist Sweden Democrats have moved away from their anti-Nato stance and are now no longer rules out Sweden joining the security alliance, the party’s leader, Jimmie Åkesson, said in an interview on Friday morning. 

“This is a shift in position,” Åkesson said in an interview on the TV4 broadcaster. “We have [previously] had a negative stance towards Nato membership. We believe that non-alliance has been good for Sweden, and we still believe that. But now we are proposing that we should not rule out a Nato membership if the security situation worsens even more.” 

He said the change would be made formal when the party lays out its election platform over the weekend. 

Stockholm mulls renaming Russian embassy street over Ukraine

Stockholm’s city government has said it is open to renaming Gjörwellsgatan, where the Russian embassy is based, after a person or place from Ukraine, TV4 has reported. 

The youth wing of Sweden’s Christian Democrat party, and others, have called for naming the street Zelensky-gatan after the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky.

“The name preparation council is meeting on Monday for [one of its] regular meetings and then we are going to discuss these fantastic proposals which have come in,” Joakim Larsson, the city councillor in change of urban planning, told the broadcaster. 

Sweden faces increased risk of Russian retaliation: Swedish Armed Forces

Sweden’s support for Ukraine and participation in the coordinated international response to Russia’s invasion has increased the risk of retaliation, the Swedish Armed Forces said in the first of its new weekly press conferences.

“There is a range of possible Russian retaliatory actions which could be aimed at Sweden,” Lieutenant General Michael Claesson, the Swedish Armed Forces’ chief of operations, said. “[Some of the things] in the Russian toolbox include influence operations, discrediting important individuals, cyber-attacks, sabotage, and more.”

Claesson was speaking at the first of the Swedish Armed Forces’ new weekly press conferences on the security situation, which will be broadcast directly at 3pm every Thursday for so long as the Russian invasion is destabilising the region.

The press conferences will serve a similar function to the daily and then weekly press conferences that the Swedish Public Health Agency used to keep the population updated during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Claesson said that the unexpectedly united response from the EU and from Nato had led to a heightened tone in Russian rhetoric and an increased risk of concrete retaliatory actions.

Sweden to boost defence budget to two percent of GDP

Sweden’s prime minister, Magdalena Andersson on Thursday announced a plan to boost the country’s defence spending to two percent of GDP, with the extra funding to reach the armed forces “as soon as practically possible”.

Speaking at a press conference alongside Mikael Damberg, Sweden’s finance minister, and Peter Hultqvist, the country’s defence minister, she said that increasing the defence budget to two percent of Sweden’s GDP would require spending around 108 billion kronor every year. In 2021, Sweden’s defence budget was roughly 66 billion kronor.

“Sweden’s defence capabilities will be greatly increased,” she said. “The war in Europe is going to affect the Swedish people. We need to continue to strengthen Sweden’s defence capabilities.”

Spotify drops paying subscribers in Russia

Music streaming giant Spotify said on Thursday that its paid subscription service would no longer be available in Russia, as sanctions had made processing payments in the country impossible.

“Due to new restrictions introduced by major payment providers, payment processing is not currently possible for the majority of Premium users in Russia,” a Spotify spokesman told AFP.

Paid premium accounts “will be cancelled if a recurring payment fails and the account will then be automatically moved to our free service,” he said in a written statement.

The company said it had also “paused all advertising campaigns running in Russia.”