Patriotic youngsters signing up to fight in their thousands.
Nuclear bunkers selling out. How the peace-loving Swedes are preparing to face down Russia
CROUCHED ready for action, chilblained hands hovering nervously beside holstered pistols, a band of rookie soldiers face down an enemy platoon, awaiting the order to fire.
Volunteers from all sections of Swedish society, aged from 20 to 55, they have just begun a two-week induction course into the home Guard (the equivalent of Britain’s Army reserve). And when the commander’s signal comes, their unreadiness for combat becomes apparent.
As they wrestle with their unfamiliar Glock 17 handguns, there is much fumbling and under-the-breath cursing.
Few shots hit the basin-shaped helmets of the cardboard soldiers at whom they are aiming – an imaginary russian invasion force presumed to have crossed the narrow Baltic strait from Finland and stormed Sweden’s south-east coast.
A fortnight from now, however, Lieutenant hakan Adolfsson, one of the officers overseeing the training of these 22 new recruits, at a pine-forested former cold War army camp in the coastal town of Vaddo, is confident they will be ready for the battlefield.
‘Well, at least in a way that doesn’t make them a safety liability – to themselves or others,’ he smiles wryly.
However, if old-fashioned qualities such as patriotism, honour and a determination to defend one’s nation from tyranny are any yardstick, these rookies, whose drills I observed on Thursday, will one day make the Swedish military proud.
They are among an extraordinary number of citizens clamouring to join the home Guard, as Sweden – newly enrolled into Nato this week – prepares for a scenario deemed unthinkable after the cold War ended: a full-scale russian attack.
The military enrolment rush began in 2022, after Vladimir Putin’s full invasion of ukraine, when 29,000 Swedes applied to join up – more than six times the usual number.
Numbers continue to rise exponentially. In the first two months of this year, 3,000 more applications flooded in, double the normal amount.
Such is the desire of ordinary Swedes to do their bit that the home Guard has had to take on extra administrative staff to handle the logjam of applications. compare this to the dire situation in Britain, where the strength of the reserve and regular armies is falling, largely because of public apathy and underfunding.
Britain’s need for security is hardly less pressing than that of the Swedes – as defence Secretary Grant Shapps pointed out this week when he backed calls led by the Mail for military spending to be increased from 2.27 to 3 per cent of GdP.
However, the zeitgeist in Sweden, where blue and yellow national flags are waved with gusto again and nationalism is no longer a dirty word, is far removed from that in Britain.
LIKE Shapps, who warns that the uk is moving perilously from a ‘post-war to pre-war’ state, Stockholm’s leading politicians and defence chiefs are spelling out the threat Putin poses in stark terms.
At a recent security conference, Michael Byden, supreme commander of Sweden’s armed forces, urged the nation’s ten million citizens to ‘ mentally prepare for the fact that a war could happen in Sweden’.
‘Everyone needs to understand how serious the situation really is,’ he said. ‘If it happens here, do I have things in the right place? What should I do? The more citizens who have thought about it, and prepared, the stronger our society is.’
Yet our two nations are responding to these doom-laden messages in diametrically opposing ways.
Though more than three million Britons under 25 are out of work, the very mention of reintroducing national service to increase the Army’s strength from just 75,000 to 125,000 (the minimum number we need to maintain security, according to military experts) evokes howls of outrage.
Witness the paroxysms of anger recently aimed at Army chief General Sir Patrick Sanders when he dared to suggest that we should recruit a big, well-trained ‘citizen army’ (he stopped short of calling for a return to conscription).
By long-standing tradition, Sweden already operates a system of ‘total civil defence’. This holds everyone between the ages of 16 and 70 jointly responsible for protecting the country when its way of life is under threat.
At times of war or heightened readiness, local authorities, private companies, individuals and even religious groups can be called up to maintain essential services, such as medical and food provision and care for children and the elderly.
This is now swinging into action. Meanwhile, moves to restore the former strength of the army reserve – which could have quickly mobilised 900,000 fighters to meet any attack from the old Soviet union – are well under way.
Sweden’s regular army will also be boosted by increasing its contingent of conscripts, who already account for ten per cent of military personnel – though judging by the prevailing mood, there will be no need to force many Swedes to serve their country.
For in their darkest hour for almost 50 years, the public here are rising gallantly and nobly – man and woman, young and old, regardless of class or ethnicity – to the vengeful, expansionist enemy looming on their eastern flank.
Their sense of sacrifice was epitomised by Lina Sighurdh, 24, one of the home Guard recruits I met. ‘To start with, I am very thankful and grateful to be a Swedish citizen,’ replied the master’s degree student (who is rather handily studying russian) when I asked her why she had enlisted.
‘I feel joining the home Guard and helping the national defence is a way to uphold our liberal values in the face of extremism.’ her remarks might almost have been scripted, but they weren’t.
other recruits offered similarly heartfelt reasons for leaving comfortable homes and jobs to undertake the tough, 12 hours-a- day course, which aims to teach them the skills of forest warfare – the type of conflict that might ensue should russian troops invade.
‘Sweden is usually neutral, so I don’t think we are going to start a war,’ said rebecca Minarik, 22, who works in a Stockholm carpentry store. ‘But I feel we may have to defend ourselves. Some countries want to expand.’
Could she envisage one of these countries invading Sweden? ‘Absolutely! And if the russians come, I’m ready to fight them.’
Listening to these young Swedes pledging to spill blood for their country was almost surreal. has this pacifist country, famous for its laidback way of life, totally reinvented itself? It would seem so.
Where now, one wondered, were the placard-waving peaceniks who once took to Stockholm’s streets with their ban-the-bomb slogans and anti-American slogans?
In less troubled times, Swedish army officers would never have specified the nationality of the soldiers engraved on those shooting targets, for fear of heightening tension. But the Swedes are done with all that. With the enemy at the door, there is no use in pretending any more.
PRIME minister Ulf Kristersson said this week that his country’s admission to Nato – formalised in Washington on Monday, and cemented by Swedish troops being dispatched to the Arctic circle to take part in operation Steadfast defender, the alliance’s biggest joint exercise since the fall of communism – has ‘ended 200 years of neutrality’.
So, when I asked Lieutenant Adolfsson who his new charges were supposed to be firing at, he gave a frank reply. ‘Well, they are carrying kalashnikovs ( the weapon of choice for the russian army) so you can make up your own mind,’ he smiled mirthlessly.
Then he added: ‘It may not be [politically] correct to say they are russians, but it’s the truth. The enemies we have today are russia, but also china, North korea, Iran and Belarus.
‘When I speak to these new recruits, the threat from russia often comes up. They will ask me if the russians are coming here, and if they do, what is the scariest prospect, and I can’t just pretend everything is fine. I have to answer them honestly.’
The fear Putin might attempt to annex Sweden may seem unlikely, particularly given his chastening venture into ukraine. But viewed through the prism of history it becomes more plausible.
Conflicts between the countries date back almost 1,000 years.
In medieval times, the thenmighty Swedish empire often waged war on the Novgorod republic, a wealthy independent state in north russia, aiming to seize land and convert it to roman catholicism.
Early skirmishes were usually won by the Swedes, but that changed under Peter the Great at the turn of the 18th century. In 1721, the imperialist tsar emerged victorious from the Great Northern War, a titanic struggle that claimed more than 500,000 lives on
both sides, many killed by starvation, disease and exhaustion.
It ended with russia as a great European superpower and the Swedish empire in terminal decline. Since Putin has hailed Peter as russia’s greatest ruler, he may harbour dreams of emulating his hero.
And while Sweden’s prime minister insists the country is far safer inside Nato, some fear its membership will only make it more of a target for Putin’s expansionism.
Already, the Kremlin has pledged to retaliate with ‘military-technical’ measures, not least because one of Sweden’s many islands, Gotland, lies just 150 miles from the russian port of Kaliningrad and could be used as the base for a Nato blockade of the Baltic.
Though the Swedes are fired by patriotic sentiment, there is a frisson of anxiety among the population, too. In readying themselves for war, many are preparing to hunker down, following government advice to stockpile supplies of food and fresh water, and take other steps to allow many weeks of enforced self-reliance.
The ultimate nightmare, of course, would be a nuclear attack. Mindful of that, there has been an upsurge in demand for underground shelters capable of withstanding an atomic blast and offering protection from fall-out.
Ironically, this is sparking a new type of entrepreneur. Victor Angelier, 44, recently left his job in IT to start a company designing and building nuclear bunkers, from basic models with a starting price around £40,000, to high-end ones costing several times that.
Already, he has sold 47 shelters, and – in an unintentionally inapt turn of phrase – describes the success as ‘mind-blowing’.
In the Cold War, when Sweden’s declared policy of non-allegiance failed to assuage fears of Soviet missile strikes, an astonishing number of nuclear bunkers – some 64,000 – were excavated beneath villages, towns and cities. Some could harbour a few key people; the biggest, hewn into Katarina mountain in Stockholm and now used as a car park, could accommodate about 20,000 citizens.
When communism collapsed and the threat from the East seemed over, some authorities sold their shelters cheaply to private buyers. But with the countdown to war ticking again, these same councils are now keen to buy them back. officials in the small southern town of Eslov offloaded their shelter for just £75,000, several years ago, to two local brothers.
This week, they were finalising its resale – to another municipality – for more than £800,000, more than ten times what they paid.
MEANWHILE the rest of Sweden’s property market is suffering the effects of a protracted recession and 4 per cent interest rates.
Retired impresario Kenneth Clausen’s home is a converted schoolhouse on a quiet country road near Ljungby, a historic market town with 16,000 residents.
As I approached the wooden house, it looked handsome enough but it seemed overvalued at its brochure price of 16million Swedish krona (£1.2million).
But tell that to the army of prospective buyers – almost 500 at the last count, not only from Sweden but as far afield as London and Berlin – who have made inquiries about it since it came on the market two weeks ago.
The reason for their interest lies behind a forbidding iron door. It opens into a huge subterranean living space spanning two floors, with 6ft-thick reinforced concrete walls. Built in 1969, it is reputedly capable of withstanding a direct hit from a 1,100lb bomb and safeguarding up to 44 people from radiation poisoning for several months.
Descending into the echoing shelter, with its Cold War kitsch decor and black and white photographs of flashpoint places such as Checkpoint Charlie, is an eerie experience: like turning the clock back 60 years.
There are original cartoon drawings instructing nuclear survivors to shower and change into hazmat suits before entering; an outdated intercom with links to vital civic services; submarine style bunks and washrooms; vast tanks for fresh water and diesel; an electricity generator.
But the strangest feature is a dimly lit, speakeasy-style lounge with a well- stocked bar. Come Armageddon, this is where the last few people left in Sweden, and perhaps the continent, would drink themselves into oblivion.
‘It was a crazy world that we lived in, back then, and it’s crazy again now,’ laments owner Mr Clausen, 64, who declines to say how little he paid for the bunker, — for fear of ‘embarrassing’ the local council.
UNAPOLOGETIC about profiting from Sweden’s crisis, he plans to use the millionplus sale proceeds to travel Europe for a year, with his wife, on a classic American motorbike.
Before the Ukraine invasion, interest in his shelter came mainly from sightseers and boozy weekenders who rented it out as a quirky man cave.
Now, desperate ‘ preppers’ – convinced the apocalypse is coming and planning to do all they can to ride it out – want to restore it to original purpose.
One local woman pleaded with Mr Clausen to let her and her four children, stay in it because the terror of an impending russian attack made them afraid to sleep in their own beds. He reassured her an attack on this rural part of Sweden, which has no vital installations, was unlikely.
However, according to Micael Steneland, the estate agent conducting the sale, the shelter has already quadrupled the value of the house and, given the level of interest, he expects bids to rise considerably higher.
His opinion is that Putin would never drop a nuclear bomb on Sweden, but might well invade – to bring his arsenal within closer striking distance of Britain and the West.
Academics such as Henrik oscarsson, a political science professor at Gothenburg University, think it more likely Putin will seek to punish Nato’s newest member in more insidious ways.
In recent weeks, russian state hackers are believed to have orchestrated disruptive cyberattacks on important Swedish computer systems.
Grant Shapps himself fell victim to an alleged attack from russia on Thursday, when the GPS signal on the Government aircraft taking him back to the UK from Poland was jammed as the plane flew near the russian exclave of Kaliningrad.
If, heaven forbid, the delusional russian president does go into Peter the Great mode, however, Sweden’s brave defenders are ready to meet his aggression head on. Their steely resolve and patriotic spirit should serve as an example to us all. And leave indifferent young Britons hanging their heads in shame.