According to the liberal daily Sydsvenska Dagbladet today, the Swedish military Chief-in-Command (in Swedish, ÖB) Micael Bydén considers it necessary to conduct large military exercises in Skåne, the most southern part of Sweden because “Russia might want to take Skåne – in order to control the Baltic Sea” (stated in the headline) and establish a bridgehead on Swedish territory.
“If the enemy takes hold here, he can control the movements and passages in and out of the Baltic Sea,” he maintains.
I would asses such a statement as coming from a calm hysteric. Unfit for the extremely responsibility-demanding job he holds.
First, it was the island of Gotland. And now it’s Skåne. Putin … might … want to take Skåne! (If for no other reason than we have an exercise here!)
Look at the map: What is it that Putin must have “taken” before he can take Skåne??
If ÖB Bydén has really said this nonsense, the government should ensure that he resigns due to extreme professional incompetence – alternatively, due to his being more loyal to the US/NATO world than to Sweden’s de facto interests.
And no media dare ask: Excuse me, what are the assumptions and scenarios that ÖB bases his extraordinary threat analysis on? They swallow the self-serving propaganda raw.
Any foolish statement about Russia can pass freely the free media, which do not need any competence as long as they support Sweden’s NATO membership, no matter the absurdity of the arguments – including inventing ex-post reasons for the panicking, ill-considered decision to become a member of the “defensive” alliance without a majority of the Swedes behind.
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The Aurora 23 exercise
The largest in Sweden in the last 30 years – the info in Swedish here.
No less than 26 000 participants from Sweden, the US, Great Britain, Finland, Poland, Portugal, Norway, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Ukraine, Denmark, Austria, Germany and France. And here you see how intellectually ‘thin’ the argument behind the exercise is. Swedish military authorities expose their banal thinking in this Reuters article.
