Sweden must revise its defence capacities, PM Löfven says in Vilnius

In his words, although Sweden does not see the swelling Russian military power as a direct threat, it should discuss ways of changing its military capacities.

“In general, without specifically talking about this [development in connection to the submarine in the Baltic Sea], it’s in general what we can see – we also expressed that the Swedish defence has to improve its capacity, that is due what has happened over the years. Since we’ve seen the increase of Russian military capacity, we do not regard it as immediate threat to Sweden but we follow what happens in the region. More activities in the Baltic Sea, in the region, so of course we also need to look over and to see what capacity we do need,” Löfven said after meeting with Lithuanian Prime Minister Algirdas Butkevičius.

The Swedish PM has said there are no news in connection to the suspected Russian submarine spotted close to Stockholm.

“About the search there is no new news. It’s still going on. After these three observations, operation of task force is going on, there is no new evidence, no news actually. It is still going on, until then we cannot say anything specifically more than we have already expressed,” he added.

Since Friday, Sweden’s military has been conducting an intelligence operation to establish the whereabouts of a suspected foreign submarine.