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Sweden is clearly taking Vladimir Putin’s repeated threats to escalate its current war in Ukraine with deadly seriousness. Households received a booklet recently detailing steps they could take to stay safe in the face of the threat of a possible war in their region. The book also covers the prospect of cyber attacks, pathogens, extreme weather events and organised crime.
Sweden, which remained neutral during the second world war and was keen to remain so until after 2022, has been proactive over the years in keeping its citizenry informed about any threats to national safety, writes Marie Cronqvist, a historian at Lund University.
As early as 1943 the Swedish government distributed a leaflet: “If the war comes: Instructions for Swedish citizens”. Swedish governments updated their advice regularly during the cold war, before gradually scrapping the country’s civil (and much of its military) defence between 1996 and 2004.
But now there’s definitely a sense that Sweden and its neighbours are taking the possibility of escalation very seriously, as are other countries in the region. And, as I write this, it has just been reported that EU countries are discussing a €500 billion (£414 billion) joint defence fund, apparently with one eye on the prospect of Donald Trump reducing the US commitment to European security through Nato.
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Russia, meanwhile, continues to escalate its rhetoric, if nothing else. A recent interview from former Putin adviser, Sergei Karaganov, has called for the “complete capitulation of Ukraine” and for Nato to return to its 1997 borders – pretty much where it was during the cold war before the likes of Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic joined.
Karaganov – a man known to be well-connected in Kremlin circles – is known for his extreme views. Last year he said that to scare the west and stop it from supporting Ukraine, Russia must hit a “bunch of targets in a number of countries”. He has also long believed that Russia should mobilise citizens of other countries whose first language is Russian to act as proxy agents for the Kremlin.
So far, so hawkish. But Russia watchers David Galbreath and Stephen Hall believe there is a dual purpose to seemingly aggressive messages of this kind from Putin and his proxies. For a Russian audience, Karaganov’s words would have projected strength. But Galbreath and Hall believe there’s a coded message to the west that Russia is open to negotiations.
The Kremlin is stating maximalist demands, which is its wont. As they say: “The Russian way of negotiating is to demand the whole cake and then settle for three-quarters, having in reality been willing to accept half. So this sort of stance suggests that the Kremlin is open to negotiation.”
Read more: Tough talk on Nato from Putin and his proxies may hide a willingness to compromise
One thing’s for sure, many Russians are taking a degree of pleasure from western discomfiture at the threats issued by Putin et al, if the 60 Minutes talkshow on Russia-1 is anything to go by. They ran a segment examining the western media reaction to Vladimir Putin’s recent speech in which he announced he had signed into law changes to his country’s nuclear doctrine which would make it easier for Russia to use its nuclear arsenal in response to a perceived threat.
Ruth Deyermond, an expert in post-Soviet security at King’s College London, believes this sort of broadcasting is all part of a campaign of hybrid warfare designed to sow doubt and division among Nato countries. Of course, war propaganda is almost as old as war itself. And, given that Russia is nowhere near powerful enough to take on Nato at its current strength, Deyermond believes the next best thing is to try to undermine Nato solidarity.
Putin did the same with Russian energy supplies, reminding western countries in the autumn of 2022 of how cold winters can get without Russian gas. It backfired, of course, as many countries who had been getting their gas from Russia switched to other energy options.
But there has been neither a nuclear attack nor a catastrophic energy failure. And Joe Biden’s decision – followed swiftly by a similar call from the UK – to allow Ukraine to use long-range missile systems to attack targets within Russia has, to an extent at least, called Putin’s bluff.
Read more: Putin's nuclear threats aim to scare the west – but Ukraine's allies are now calling his bluff
But could this have come too late for Ukraine? It’s now nearly three years since Putin launched his full-scale invasion and Russian troops are beating Ukrainian defenders back, slowly – and at considerable cost in terms of casualties – but steadily. And, for the first time, the sheer war-weariness of the Ukrainian people is being reflected in opinion polls.
A Gallup poll released on November 19 found that for the first time, more than half – 52% – of Ukrainians now favour some sort of negotiated peace settlement and only 38% want the country to continue fighting until it wins the war. This last figure compares with 63% who wanted to carry on fighting until victory this time last year and 72% in 2022.
Meanwhile, trust in the government has fallen to 24%, a finding which must give Volodymyr Zelensky sleepless nights. Stefan Wolff of the University of Birmingham and Tetyana Malyarenko of Odesa University believe the Ukrainian leader has become more vulnerable to challenges from his hawkish predecessor, Petro Poroshenko.
No surprise then perhaps, that the first point on Zelensky’s recently promulgated “Resilience Plan” is headed “Unity” and states: “The world may sometimes turn a deaf ear to individual voices, but never to an entire nation that knows what it wants, works together, and knows how to achieve its goals.”
Read more: Ukraine war: polls show most Ukrainians now support a negotiated peace as Russian advances continue
Hypersonic and hybrid warfare
One of the things that so thrilled Russia’s 60 Minutes show was the western media’s apparent fear and loathing of the country’s latest weapon, the medium-range, nuclear-capable Oreshnik hypersonic missile.
Putin responded to Biden’s decision to allow Ukraine to use US missiles to strike targets at Russia by ordering one of these missiles to be fired at the Ukrainian city of Dnipro. Rather chillingly it travelled the 900-odd miles in 15 minutes before dropping its payload of six warheads at predetermined targets.
Putin said the weapon was “comparable in strength to a nuclear strike”, if enough wearheads were launched at the same area. He said it would be “like a meteorite falling”. Matthew Powell, an expert in air power at the University of Portsmouth, provides a rundown of how the Oreshnik works and what it can do here.
Read more: Introducing the Oreshnik missile: Vladimir Putin's not-so-secret weapon
But as Ruth Deyermond notes, warfare is increasingly not all about missiles. And in the Ukraine conflict we’re seeing much more of what is called “hybrid warfare” at play, with the threats to undersea cabling, shipping lanes and the like, which can destabilise a country by threatening a country’s communications or supply chains. Basil Germond, a maritime warfare expert at Lancaster University, explains how hybrid warfare works at sea.
Read more: Russia and the west are entering the 'grey zone' of warfare – and the oceans are a key battleground
‘Uncertain times’
If you were taken by surprise by the news that Syrian rebel forces had overrun the city of Aleppo late last week you wouldn’t be the only one. The sudden and comprehensive sweep through Aleppo province and recapture of Syria’s second-largest city took just a few days, catching the regime of Bashar al-Assad and his Russian and Iranian allies largely off guard.
It now looks as if Assad’s forces are being rolled back even further. It was announced earlier today that fighters led by members of the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham Islamist group have retaken Hama, another key town further south towards Homs and Damascus.
But, since the civil war began in 2011, the survival of Assad’s dictatorship in Syria has largely depended on the support of Russia and Iran, writes Scott Lucas, a Middle East expert at University College Dublin. So it’s hardly surprising that with both countries heavily committed elsewhere, rebels saw and seized their chance. Lucas calls it the Russia-Iran-Assad ‘axis of the vulnerable’ – which, he writes here, is “cracking in Syria”.
Read more: The Russia-Iran-Assad 'axis of the vulnerable' is cracking in Syria
To finish on an upbeat note, it was heartening to note that what appeared to be nothing short of a coup attempt by the South Korean president, Yoon Suk Yeol, was given short shrift by the people and politicians alike. Yoon called on Tuesday afternoon for martial law to be imposed, in response to difficulties in passing his budget (although he blamed North Korean “anti-state forces”).
But members of the National Assembly (some of whom had to break barriers to get into the building) assembled and voted unanimously to reject Yoon’s call. With pressure from the parliamentarians inside the building and protesting citizens outside, security forces stood down. As Sarah A. Son of the University of Sheffield recounts, South Koreans, the older of whom will remember only too well the bad old days of the dictators, breathed a sigh of relief and blessed the strength of their democracy.
Read more: South Korea: defeat of president's attempt to impose martial law shows a robust democracy at work
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