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Disinfo: Sweden attempts to use the “Russian threat” to avoid attention to the country’s failure on fighting COVID-19

Summary

The Swedish parliament has decided to enlarge the military budget with 40 percent. The main argument for this is Stockholm’s concern with the “Russian threat” in the Baltic Sea.

/…/

When the whole world entered to quarantine, the Swedish authorities decided not to do so. Now they are reaping the harvest of what they have sown – enormous social, medical and economical problems.

But the Swedish media keeps quiet on this and attempts to show a pretty face. In order not to let the public know about the country’s internal problems, the media evokes different kinds of mythical threats, sacrificing enormous amounts of money to fortify positions of NATO at our borders. Why recognise your own mistakes, when you can find an external enemy and blame everything on him?

Disproof

The Parliament of Sweden has decided to significantly increase budget spendings into “total defence” - to civil contingency planning, civil defence - and military. This decision is based partly from the experiences of Russia’s aggressions against Georgia in 2008, the illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014 and Russia’s ongoing aggression against Ukraine in Donbas.

Sweden is not a member of NATO and needs to rely on its own resources for repelling aggression and handling crises.

Sweden did introduce restrictions to fight the spread of the coronavirus, and has currently stricter restrictions than, for instance, Russia. Swedish media is, just as can be expected in a pluralistic and democratic society, intensively questioning the measures taken by the Swedish government. The King of Sweden has described the Swedish policy as “a failure”. The claim that Swedish media avoid criticism towards the government is unfounded and false.

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nation-news.ru (Archived)
  • Reported in: Issue 225
  • DATE OF PUBLICATION: 16/12/2020
  • Language/target audience: Russian
  • Country: Sweden
  • Keywords: coronavirus, Military, NATO

Disclaimer

Cases in the EUvsDisinfo database focus on messages in the international information space that are identified as providing a partial, distorted, or false depiction of reality and spread key pro-Kremlin messages. This does not necessarily imply, however, that a given outlet is linked to the Kremlin or editorially pro-Kremlin, or that it has intentionally sought to disinform. EUvsDisinfo publications do not represent an official EU position, as the information and opinions expressed are based on media reporting and analysis of the East Stratcom Task Force.

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