Swedish defense officials warn citizens to get ready for war

Two important defense officials have told Swedes to get ready for war, which has made some people worried and accused them of being too dramatic.

Minister Carl-Oskar Bohlin said at a conference that a war could happen in Sweden.

The military leader, Gen Micael Byden, agrees with the message and thinks all Swedes should get ready in their minds for the possibility.

However, politicians who are against it have disagreed with how the warnings were given.

Former prime minister Magdalena Andersson said on Swedish TV that the security situation is serious, but war is not about to happen right now.

The kids’ rights group Bris said that its national phone line doesn’t usually get calls about the chance of war. This week, many young people called us worried because they saw news or posts on TikTok about it.

“Bris spokeswoman Maja Dahl told the BBC that this was carefully planned and not something said without thinking. ” “They should have given information for kids when they share information for adults. ”

The comments from the civil defence minister and military chief are being seen as a strong warning, even though they were very serious.

After more than 200 years of peace, Sweden is close to joining the Nato defense alliance. It just needs approval from Turkey’s parliament and then from Hungary.

The leader said what he said was not something new.

He went to the eastern part of Ukraine a month ago. Sweden is one of the countries helping to train Ukrainian pilots. Stockholm is thinking about sending powerful Gripen fighter jets to Ukraine.

“I don’t want to scare people. I just want more people to think about their own lives and what they need to do,” said Gen Byden in an interview with Aftonbladet newspaper.

Finland is now part of Nato, and Russian officials are saying it will be the first to have problems if things get worse with Nato.

The civil defence minister of Sweden wants people to be aware of what is happening but not to worry too much. He asked local officials, emergency planners, and people to help.

MrBohlin said he can’t sleep because he thinks things are moving too slowly. He said this at the Society and Defence conference on Sunday.

The President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, asked Sweden to work with Ukraine and other countries to make weapons and become stronger together during a conference.

Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said that by 2024, Sweden will spend 2% of its money on military defense, which is double the amount it spent in 2020.

Oscar Jonsson, a defence expert, said that the warnings from defence leaders were blown out of proportion and that 90% of the concerns came from frustration that not enough was being done to improve civil and military defence.

“He said that time is short and the goal was to urge agencies, people, and departments to take action,” he told the media.

“The Swedish military is very skilled, but it is not very large. ” The new defence bill says we need to create 3. 5 military units, but Ukraine had 28 when the war began.

General Byden is telling people to get ready for war, and this comes right after another warning from the head of Poland’s National Security Bureau, Jacek Siewiera, who said that to avoid a war with Russia, countries near Nato should start getting ready for a confrontation within the next three years.

He said that a report from a German group about preparing for a Russian attack in six years was too hopeful.

Oscar Jonsson, an expert from the Swedish Defence University, said that for a war to happen, a few things would need to happen first: Russia’s war in Ukraine would need to stop, its military would need time to get stronger again, and Europe would need to not have support from the US military.

He said that everything was possible.