Tensions arising from the war in Ukraine were felt acutely in Sweden on Wednesday (2): four Russian fighter jets violated the Nordic country’s airspace for a few moments, sparking protests in Stockholm.
The incident occurred when two Su-27 fighter jets and two Su-24 fighter-bombers entered the region of the island of Gotland, a strategic and militarized point by the Swedes in the Baltic Sea.
According to the Defense Ministry, Gripen fighter jets were sent to the area, but the invaders had already left. It was either a test of Swedish speed or a mistake. “In light of the current situation, we view the event very seriously,” the Armed Forces said in a statement. “Of course, it is completely unacceptable,” minister Peter Hultqvist, who will file a formal complaint with Moscow, told TT news agency.
Cases like this are relatively common, but rarely with airspace invasion. Side-by-side planes test the speed of reaction of the adversary — this in Europe, in the Pacific, in the North Pole. But the conflict in Ukraine is something unparalleled since the end of the Second World War in 1945.
The situation has led to speculation about the escalation of the clash between Moscow and Washington and its allies in NATO, the western military alliance. Sweden is not part of the club largely so as not to antagonize Russia, as is neighboring Finland, but it operates in line with its operational guidelines.
On Wednesday, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told a news conference that “nobody wins a nuclear war, everybody loses.” It is obvious, so much so that the countries holding the bomb in the United Nations Security Council signed a document pledging not to start an atomic conflict, but it shows the point of the crisis.
In Moscow, his colleague Sergei Lavrov gave an interview to the Arab network Al Jazeera and stressed that “a Third World War would be very destructive and nuclear”. Again, a troubling truism for anyone in the midst of a military invasion of a neighbor.
On Sunday (27), Vladimir Putin had pulled this atomic card from the deck, putting his strategic forces on high alert. In practice, this means that the bureaucratic paths between the order to launch a nuclear warhead and the military at the end are shortened, and the system, online, so to speak.
According to Putin, it was a response to the reaction of NATO authorities in relation to the war that had started on Thursday (24). On that day, he had already warned Westerners to stay out of the conflict, on pain of suffering unprecedented consequences — a not-so-subtle way of saying he could use the bomb.
Russia and the USA concentrate 90% of the world’s nuclear warheads, a legacy of the first Cold War, more than enough to put an end to humanity. So far, Americans and allies have insisted that they will not cross Ukrainian borders, precisely to avoid a confrontation with the Russians.
Putin’s nuclear intimidation may be all it seems, but the fact is that the topic of World War III is now in the news as it hasn’t been since the Soviet Union years.
