Growing concern about Russia leads to new defence thinking in Sweden

..."The strategic map has changed. We must now analyse what resources are needed here at home, if tension in the north of Europe were to grow", said Colonel Stefan Gustafsson in a recent interview with the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter.
As Gustafsson sees it, Russia’s armed forces have passed their nadir, and Russia is now able to invest more in its military. According to Gustafsson, Russia also has new energy interests to protect in the Barents Sea, and in the Baltic Sea gas pipeline, which is a cause for concern in Sweden.
... Foreign Minister Carl Bildt noted in a foreign policy speech made on behalf of the government that development in Russia has taken a few backward steps. He said that the political system and the media atmosphere are not as free as before, human rights continue to be violated in Chechnya, and that the unsolved murder of journalist Anna Politkovskaya and the circumstances surrounding the death of Aleksandr Litvinenko "cast dark shadows".
Bildt did not want to take an immediate stand on the new assessments from the military. "I have only read what the newspapers have written. I need to examine the situation better", Bildt said to journalists. HELSINGIN SANOMAT