Sweden's military intelligence and security service has named Russia as the biggest threat to the country's security and NATO. In its annual report, the agency warned that Moscow's increasingly risky behavior could lead to a dangerous escalation.
This was reported by Politico, citing the annual report of Swedish intelligence, published on February 17.
The report says the threat from Russia is “serious and specific” and describes Moscow's behavior as “opportunistic and aggressive.” Examples of hostile actions include airspace violations, sabotage, and cyber operations in the Baltic Sea region. The document describes Russia as “the main threat to Sweden and NATO.”
The Swedish assessment comes after Estonia's Foreign Intelligence Service last week called Russia “dangerous despite its incompetence” in its own annual review. At the same time, the Estonian report warned against “panic”: intelligence has found no signs that Russia is planning an attack on Estonia or NATO in the near future, given Europe's strengthening of its defenses.
Politico writes that an unnamed senior NATO official confirmed this assessment during a briefing attended by a representative of the publication. According to him, the security of the alliance is ensured by faith in Article 5 Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty establishes that an armed attack on one NATO member is considered an attack on all members and obliges each member to provide it with assistance and obliges NATO members to increase defense spending to 3.5% of GDP.
At the same time, both the Estonian report and the NATO representative noted that Russia has sharply increased its artillery production, meaning that Moscow will remain a threat even if peace is achieved in Ukraine.
According to Estonian intelligence estimates, Russia's production of shells and other artillery has increased 17-fold since the start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. “You can't just turn it all off the day the war ends,” the senior NATO official said, adding that in some areas Russia will become a stronger military force than it was at the start of the war.