The West should aim to create more “strategic difficulties” in a bid to reign in Russia’s behaviour, with the first priority being to “stop the aggression against Ukraine”, an area where NATO is not doing enough, Sweden’s Foreign Minister Tobias Billström told Euractiv.

“We have to understand that Russia is a neighbour that is behaving irresponsibly, which is threatening the world with irresponsible nuclear threats and the idea of recreating its former empire at the expense of independent sovereign states (…) We have to put an end to that,” Billström said.

“We have to create more strategic difficulties for Russia,” he added.

His comments come after French President Emmanuel Macron pushed for ‘strategic ambiguity’ towards Russia and hinted at the possibility of sending Western troops to Ukraine, which opened a fierce debate among Europeans.

Billström said Paris’ idea would be going too far for Sweden, which joined NATO only in March, ending 200 years of military non-alignment.

“Regarding the French proposal to train Ukrainian personnel on Ukrainian soil, it’s not on the table for Sweden,” Billström said, hinting that Stockholm found the unfolding debate around Macron’s comments untimely and distracting.

‘Not enough’

“In order to [stop Russia], we first of all have to stop the aggression against Ukraine,” Billström said. “Not all countries understand the sense of urgency to act that there is.”

“Those countries need to understand that the conflict is here and that we need to deal with it.”

Given their geographic proximity, the Nordic and Baltic states have been warning all the more vigorously about the threat emanating from a Russian victory.

“NATO is not doing enough for Ukraine,” Billström said, adding that Kyiv’s armed forces need “more of almost everything”.

Providing more military equipment for Ukraine “is not a question of industrial capacity,” he said.

“[This] comes down to political leadership and political will,” Billström added, pointing out that the United States and Europe had far more joint production capacity than Russia.

---

---

Sweden’s security pitch

Billström said he sees his country play a key role in ramping up Europe’s own security, given its strategic location and capabilities in AI and space.

Sweden became the 32nd member of NATO earlier this month, almost two years after it submitted its application, which was delayed by wrangling with Turkey and Hungary.

Stockholm will push for greater deterrence and leverage its strategically important role in the Baltic Sea, Billström said.

Billström also stressed that Sweden was firmly in the camp of governments that wanted to concentrate on organising European defence jointly with NATO and “in relation to the transatlantic link”.

“We cannot develop the EU’s defence strategy independently of the United States,” he stated.

Installing a separate EU defence commissioner is thus “not the first thing we should think about,” he said, referring to a proposal first floated by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in February.

Reviving Baltic Council

With all Baltic states bar Russia inside NATO, Sweden also aims to discuss how the Council of Baltic Sea States (CBSS) could be repurposed to address security issues, Billström said.

While the forum was originally created after the fall of the Iron Curtain to foster economic cooperation between countries around the Baltic Sea, as Russia was opening up, its suspension has deprived the CBSS of its core purpose.

An upgrade to the forum would “get Germany and Poland, two key states for European security, to sit at the same table”, Billström said.

“There is no formal proposal on the table yet, and we don’t want to regionalise NATO. But the security dialogue (…) is a good thing,” he added.

The German foreign ministry told Euractiv that it is aware that the Finnish CBSS presidency prioritises “security, crisis readiness, and resilience” but that the agenda for the next meeting has not yet been settled.

It emphasised that it is looking forward to “further deepening the close cooperation with Finland and Sweden as NATO partners in the Alliance [NATO]”, stressing that “the CBSS is a forum for political dialogue”.