World

Inside Sweden’s re-established military unit on Gotland

A few kilometres away another group wrapped in thick winter jackets, body armour and helmets fired anti-tank missiles, throwing up sprays of ice and snow behind them as instructors watched the orange rockets streak down the range. It was routine training for the young recruits based on the Baltic island of Gotland, but these troops are at the forefront of Sweden's efforts to bolster its military as Stockholm worries about Russian intentions in Europe and the Baltic.

Following the annexation of Crimea, the conflict in Ukraine, incidents of Russian military jets approaching Swedish aircraft around the Baltic and the 2014 sighting of a mystery sub – suspected to be Russian, which Moscow denied – near Stockholm, Sweden has scrambled to beef up a military that was cut back after the end of the Cold War. The Nordic nation, which has not been to war in two centuries, reintroduced limited conscription in 2017, stepped up defence spending and placed a garrison on Gotland in January 2018.

READ ALSO:

Taking a break from the target practice by a campfire on the icy ground near the firing ranges, Ida Delin, a young lance-corporal from Gothenburg who is a part of the new garrison, was upbeat about her posting to the island.

"Everybody feels it's very important, what we're doing really matters for Sweden," she said, the collar of her camouflage smock pulled up around her ears to protect against the cold.

File photo: Sören Andersson / TT

Rebuilding the garrison

Gotland's location in the Baltic means it has a high strategic value, giving its owner the ability to dominate nearby air and seaways, Defence Minister Peter Hultqvist said. But regional developments, from Russia's 2008 conflict with Georgia to the 2014 annexation of Crimea and the conflict in eastern Ukraine, prompted a rethink in Sweden.

"I don't talk about the threat directly to Sweden, I talk about a security situation that is worse today than ten years ago," Hultqvist told AFP. "Because of that we have upgraded our national military capability."

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has long denounced the "myth of a Russian threat" in Europe and accused Western powers of destabilizing the continent.

Down the road from the firing ranges, the regiment paraded under a leaden sky to mark the anniversary of the creation of the first unit on the island in 1811, presided over by the unit's mascot – a ram named Harald V– and its commander, Colonel Mattias Ardin, a powerfully built native of the island tasked with rebuilding the garrison.

READ ALSO:

The 50-year-old started his military career at the garrison in the twilight years of the Cold War, when non-aligned Sweden eyed the USSR warily – its navy chased suspected Soviet submarines from its waters and it maintained a conscript army to watch its borders.

Following the fall of the Soviet Union, Sweden cut defence spending, doing away with its regiment on Gotland in 2005 and selling its barracks. But with the conflict in Ukraine and rising tensions between Moscow and the European Union, Sweden's parliament voted to return troops to the island again in 2016.

"We have a strong Russia that has a lot more military activity than before and we see what is happening in Ukraine, so we see a deteriorating security situation," Ardin said after the ceremony.

Nearby, bulldozers and diggers worked on new facilities for the 282 full-time soldiers that make up the garrison and that will shelter the several dozen tanks and armoured vehicles based there.

Read More – Source

[contf]
[contfnew]

thelocal.eu

[contfnewc]
[contfnewc]

Related Articles

Back to top button