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Sweden's NATO membership is a smörgåsbord of problems for Putin! Military experts explain why Scandinavian country joining the alliance will halt Vladimir's plans for global domination
Sweden's formal accession to NATO today is a towering smörgåsbord of a body blow to Russian President Vladimir Putin's worldview and designs of global domination.
Not only does it transform the Baltic Sea into a NATO lake, but it also isolates the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad situated between Poland and Lithuania, and it creates a strategic chokehold on the Kremlin's key port in St. Petersburg.
Heretofore, Russian nuclear submarines were largely free to run amok causing havoc along the coastlines of Sweden and Finland. No longer. Not since Finland joined NATO in April 2023 – and now Sweden nine months later.
Yet the strategic implications to Putin extend far deeper than just the Baltic Sea. Much of Putin's early economic and military vision for Russia was predicated upon developing the potential of the Northern Sea Route (NSR). Now, given Stockholm's accession to Brussels alongside Helsinki, the key NSR port city of Murmansk is strategically threatened even more.
Prior to Putin's war against Ukraine, Russia had invested heavily in the 3,500 miles of coastline comprising the NSR. This included building port facilities, amassing a large fleet of icebreakers – and creating a new threat to NATO's arctic forces (especially the United States whose navy is tactically lacking in this area).
Sweden's accession to NATO constitutes a significant blow for the Russian President. (File)
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken accepts Sweden's instruments of accession from Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson in Washington, March 7, 2024
Swedish soldiers from the Norrlandsbrigade in Boden on a combat vehicle 90 during training together with Finnish hunting units in Hetta, northern Finland, March 5 2024
Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson in front of a Stridsbat 90H fast assault craft after a press conference on a new support package for Ukraine is presented on February 20, 2024
Now, Putin's once-vaunted 15-year plan for the NSR has gone by the wayside in the wake of his faltering war in Ukraine – and much of Moscow's economic and military projects along the NSR are at a crashing standstill.
Whereas Putin was once eying a sizable advantage in the Arctic – he even planted a Russian titanium flag underneath the North Pole in 2007 – he now finds himself on the defensive. Not only does Putin face defending Russia's 830-mile border with Finland, but he must also contend with Sweden's ability to reinforce 124 miles of his border with fellow NATO member-state Norway, extending between Treriksrøysa at Krokfjellet and ending on the Varangerfjord next to the Barents Sea.
Where will the forces necessary to defend these borders come from? He already stripped Russian border security forces along the border with Finland, and pulled the 11th Armor Corps from Kaliningrad to fight in Ukraine.
Sweden and Finland had long been integrated into NATO's military exercises and military officials in Stockholm and Helsinki had long coordinated with Brussels. However, now, given Sweden's formal accession, there is a new tie that binds Sweden to Washington, London and Brussels: NATO's daunting Article 5.
Putin's calculus, accordingly, will have to change. In the past, he attempted to keep Sweden and Finland off-balance and out-of-step with NATO by conducting underwater psych-operations along their coastlines. Sweden, however, in particular, was tenaciously aggressive in pushing back, often dropping depth charges on suspect submarine targets operating in their territorial waters.
A soldier from the Swedish Amphibious Corps onboard a CB90-class fast assault craft participates in a military demonstration on February 20, 2024, at the Berga Naval Base
Swedish Army tanks participate in a military exercise called 'Cold Response 2022', gathering around 30,000 troops from NATO member countries as well as Finland and Sweden, amid Russia's invasion of Ukraine, in Setermoen in the Arctic Circle, Norway, March 25, 2022
Pictured: Two Swedish Airforce JAS-39 Gripen fighter aircraft in close formation. Sweden will bring state of the art submarines and a fleet of highly capable Gripen fighter aircraft to NATO's forces (File)
Soldiers from the 13th counter intelligence battalion, 2nd recon platoon of the Swedish Armed Forces, participate in military exercise in Kungsangen, near Stockholm on February 27, 2024
Sweden is bringing highly 'capable armed forces and a first-class defence industry,' Jens Stoltenberg noted
Stockholm has consistently taken the existential threat posed by Moscow seriously, including Sweden's Civil Contingencies Agency decision in 2018 to renew building of bomb shelters to add to the estimated 65,000 already spread throughout the country. As it was, Sweden was a formidable foe to Russian expansionism under Putin. Now, as a member of NATO it is bringing that much-needed mindset to Brussels.
Nor is Sweden coming empty-handed. As Jens Stoltenberg, the Secretary General of NATO, noted on X, formerly known as Twitter, is bringing highly 'capable armed forces and a first-class defence industry.' Sweden's defence industry will only be strengthened by the increased sharing of military technologies that is to come.
Yet, perhaps, the greatest immediate impact Sweden will have on Putin is a psychological one. Putin is already paranoid that NATO is an offensive-oriented military alliance – and now that coalition has been significantly strengthened and at a fortuitous time.
Russia, to its detriment, continues to predicate the preponderance of its military doctrine on the principles of mass and as a result, has a tendency of trying to defend everywhere while in effect creating the conditions that, in effect, they are defending nowhere. First Finland and now Sweden's accession to NATO has only compounded that conundrum for the Kremlin.
Sweden's accession to NATO essentially reduces Moscow's military options against the West to non-conventional means. Putin's Black Sea fleet has already been, in effect, neutered by a navy-less Ukraine and he surely knows that his once-proud Baltic Fleet headquartered in Kaliningrad has now been rendered a sitting duck.
We have likely already witnessed Putin's heightened paranoia on display. Not just with respect to Ukraine, but in terms of Russia's overall conventional military vulnerability. Putin's recent State of the Union address in late February threatened NATO with nuclear war if Brussels dispatched troops to the frontlines in Ukraine – and the Kremlin is aggressively pursuing emplacing nuclear weapons in outer space.
Sweden's entry into NATO is only going to exacerbate Putin's growing conventional military vulnerability. Stockholm is nearing a decision to equip Kyiv with its formidable SAAB-built JAS 39 Gripen fighter plane – and its own highly trained army, air force and navy will likely give Putin a new pause in the Baltic Sea and Arctic.
Moscow may have recently gained a few kilometers of ground in and around Avdiivka in Ukraine but allegorically speaking Putin has lost far significant strategic ground in and around Kaliningrad, the Baltic Sea itself as well as Murmansk and the western waterways of the NSR. Consequently, Russia is less secure as a result – and NATO exponentially strengthened.
Blackhawk UH-60 helicopters gathered at a temporary base during the Nordic Response military exercise on March 7, 2024 in Kiruna, Sweden
The exercise, which primarily takes place across Scandinavia from March 3-14, features 20,000 troops from 13 allied countries. Following the recent NATO expansion, the group now includes Finland and Sweden
A Swedish air crew prepares a JAS Gripen fighter jet for takeoff at Kallax Air Base, Sweden, March 4, 2024
Swedish army soldiers stand on the tarmac at Kallax Air Base, Sweden, March 4, 2024
Seamstress Tove Lycke at work with new NATO flags, at the flag manufacturer 'Flagghuset', in Akersberga, outside Stockholm, Sweden, March 7 2024
Putin, undoubtedly, will soon come to regret awakening a determined and resilient Sweden. After two centuries of neutrality, Sweden has taken a side – and its guns are aimed squarely at Putin and the Russian Federation.
Consequently, Putin is feeling the 2nd- and 3rd-order effects of a really bad decision. His losses are significant - over 421,000, including many of his most elite formations, weapons and equipment. He is down to mass, Korean War weapons, teenagers and old men, and a dependence upon his 'arsenals of evil' to sustain combat operations in Ukraine. The last thing he needed was an exposed border to his north - but here he is.
Sweden, along with Finland, will only make it harder, and Putin more desperate. He will make his presence felt with air and sea incursions, but his show of force will be just that – a show. All bark and a little bite. Absent conventional military alternatives, he will have to accept risk while the bulk of his military is tied down in Ukraine.
32 NATO member-states are now staring down at Putin – and none as now resolutely as Sweden and Finland. Sweden has drawn a redline and their national resolve is crystal clear. Stockholm will not countenance a Russian dominated Europe.