IZMIR, Türkiye

The Swedish Security Service (Sapo) now sees Russia as the biggest threat to Sweden’s security along with China and Iran. 

Russia’s war on Ukraine, which it launched a year ago this Friday, has fundamentally affected Sweden, said Sapo head Charlotte von Essen.

Tensions between Russia and Western democracies are constantly increasing, and Russia views Sweden as part of Europe and already as a member of NATO. Russia is unpredictable, and Moscow is willing to take big risks, according to Sapo.

Von Essen said that Russia and its actions, along with those of other authoritarian states, have become increasingly aggressive. She said extremism is growing, and the constitutional threat as well, noting that the mission to protect national security has never been more important but is also more difficult than ever.

An increase in Russian intelligence activities and Russian threats against the security of Sweden are to be expected, she said. This could, for example, be a matter of preparing to carry out sabotage, spreading disinformation, or using violent extremists in order to destabilize Sweden.

Developments in the outside world and in Sweden also contribute to the fact that the threat of attacks from violent Islamist extremism and violent right-wing extremism remains and is in some cases also increasing, she said.

Threats of attacks against Sweden have increased in the last month, and the burning of the Muslim holy book the Quran in front of the Turkish embassy in Stockholm and a disinformation campaign claiming that Swedish social service agencies kidnap Muslim children are the main reasons for this, said von Essen.

To be successful in this work, as well as to ensure a safe and secure election, creating the conditions necessary for Sweden’s EU presidency, and to achieve results in investigations into suspected offences against national security in Sweden, cooperation with the other government agencies that make up the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) is a valuable aspect of protecting Sweden against a threat that is constantly changing, as is the case regarding cybercrimes, according to von Essen.

Daniel Stenling, Sapo’s head of counterintelligence, said that Russia is the most concrete threat against Swedish security.

“Russia has also carried out extensive intelligence activities against our country. They are in need of technology to regain and improve their military strength,” said Stenling.

“China is (also) a big challenge for Sweden. They are an ongoing threat.

“We can see that they are executing extensive intelligence service and security operations against us,” he noted.

He said that politics, the economy and science and technology are all targeted by China.

They are gathering information from the Swedish trade, army and space industries and also from research institutes, universities and politicians, said Stenling.

“The consequence of their extensive efforts is the risk of draining Swedish innovativeness and competitiveness regarding our industry, research and development.”

According to Sapo, turmoil in the outside world has increased the threat to Sweden. At the same time, radicalization of perpetrators acting alone is an ongoing threat, and Sapo tries in different ways to prevent recruitment to terrorist organizations and the financing of such organizations. Radicalization often takes place online, noted Susanna Trehörning, deputy head of constitutional protection and counter-terrorism at the Swedish Security Police.

As an explanation of how radicalization can happen, Trehörning described a case.

“It is often about a young man, sometimes even children. We have seen cases when the perpetrator is as young as 12 years old,” she said.

As a type of example that Sapo bases several recently investigated cases on, the person finds a community in online forums and acquires national and international contacts there. There are closed, often encrypted forums where the language is raw and where there are large amounts of images and videos of violence and executions. It is also common to find instructions on how to build your own weapons.

Algorithms also contribute to a self-generating radicalization process that is very difficult to detect and prevent, Trehörning added.