By William Tucker
Chief Correspondent for In Homeland Security
Since the Russian invasion of Georgia in 2008, Moscow hasn’t stopped throwing its weight around with the former Soviet states.
After Georgia, Russia was accused of assisting with a political coup in Kyrgyzstan, and eventually involved itself in the political turmoil of Ukraine. Just recently, Russia decided to move the border of South Ossetia further south into Georgian territory resulting in another annexation after the more public seizing of Crimea.
These areas where Russia has been most active are considered integral to Russian security; however the added inherent political weakness in these states certainly played a role in Moscow’s choice of venue for its adventurism in Russia’s near abroad.
The Putin regime has taken action against the Baltic states as well, but that has been largely in the form of cyberattacks and more conventional espionage. Not that other states on the Russian periphery have been spared as Poland has either arrested or expelled Russians engaging in unsavory state sponsored activities.
Perhaps the one area of Russian interest that hasn’t garnered the media attention it deserves is Moscow’s aggressive targeting of Sweden. Incursions into Swedish territory by the Russian air force have been problematic as Stockholm discovered its military wasn’t able to detect the foreign aircraft for hours after their cross border transgressions. Russian naval patrols have also been rather active off the coast of Sweden in the Baltic Sea and the Gulf of Bothnia.
On the diplomatic scene, Russia has been rather inflammatory in verbiage. In June of this year polling in Sweden indicated a surge in public support for joining NATO which was primarily driven by Russian actions. In 2012 public support for joining NATO stood at 17 percent, but June’s poll put the support at 34 percent. Keep in mind this is a nation that hasn’t been at war for 200 years, but a portion of Sweden’s public is sufficiently concerned enough to jettison a long standing policy of neutrality because of Moscow’s actions.
In response to this debate among the Swedish public, Russia’s ambassador to Sweden, Viktor Tatarintsev, stated, “I don’t think it will become relevant in the near future, even though there has been a certain swing in public opinion. But if it happens there will be counter measures. Putin pointed out that there will be consequences, which Russia will have to resort to a response of the military kind and re-orientate our troops and missiles.
The country that joins NATO needs to be aware of the risks it is exposing itself to.” Sweden of course isn’t alone in this targeted, Mafioso style of diplomacy. Finland was warned last year by Putin adviser Sergei Markov that, “Finland should think of the consequences, if it ponders joining NATO. It must ask could joining start World War III.” Provocative statements, indeed, but deliberate in message.
For Russia, these statements are as much about strength as they are about weakness. In my article, The Enemy’s Vote*, I wrote “Russian history is marked with expansion and contraction of territory in the most extreme of cases, but with the fall of the Soviet Union, current NATO member states once buffered from Russia proper in West Germany, are now, with the inclusion of the Baltic states, a mere 75 miles from St. Petersburg.”
Russia is taking advantage of western indecisiveness and risk aversion to firmly place nation-states on its near abroad into Moscow’s political orbit either by economic persuasion or force. Moscow wants to put as much distance between NATO and its western border as possible before demographics and flailing economics catch up.
The targeting of Sweden and Finland are a natural progression of Putin’s policy pursuit in this regard, but it does show a certain confidence to target two first world nations with modern military forces. NATO membership would upend this pursuit and push Moscow to take more aggressive actions. The Russian military exercise in March practicing the seizure of Gotland off the east coast of Sweden was a rather profound statement and may be indicative of how far Russia is willing to go to ensure that Sweden stays out of NATO. For now, diplomatic relations between the two nations are likely to remain strained as the recent tit for tat of diplomatic expulsions demonstrates.
Sweden accused a Russian diplomat in Stockholm of engaging in activities inconsistent with his diplomatic status (i.e., espionage) and sent the man home. Russia returned the favor in kind, but seemed to have chosen someone in the Swedish embassy at random.
Regardless, the Swedish security service SAPO has stated that Sweden’s largest threat comes from Russia and as long as Russia feels unsure on its western front – which it has for the last 400 years – then its aggressive attitude toward its European neighbors is unlikely to change.
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