Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, said in 2023 that Sweden had gone into “battle-array for war on the Muslim world” by supporting “the criminal”, and that “all Islamic scholars agree that those who desecrate the Koran deserved the most severe punishment”.

For the first time since officially becoming a NATO member in March 2024, Sweden has taken a major step in its international military role. On January 18, 2025, Sweden deployed a mechanized battalion to Latvia,

Russia is "the main actor" in hybrid attacks on the alliance, said a senior NATO official following a spate of incidents.

Sweden has opened a preliminary investigation into suspected aggravated “sabotage” and ordered the detention of a vessel in the Baltic Sea suspected of damaging an underwater fiber optic cable connecting Latvia and the Swedish island of Gotland earlier that day.

Swedish authorities have seized a ship over the “aggravated sabotage” of an undersea fibre-optic cable linking Latvia with a strategically important island in Sweden.

Mads Petersen, owner of Greenland-based startup Arctic Unmanned, sat in a car to keep warm while he tested a small drone at minus 43 degrees Celsius (minus 45 degrees Fahrenheit).

Russia and China have stepped up military activity in the Arctic, while NATO states in the region are reporting more acts of sabotage on energy and communications lines. President Donald Trump has recently revived U.

The 23 EU members who also belong to NATO are likely to agree to raise the defence spending target above the current 2% of national output at a June summit of the alliance that will set a new level, European Council President Antonio Costa said.

"Looking at the good points in the conversation about this, it seems that the United States is determined to organise the defence and security of the Arctic region," Defence Minister Antti Häkkänen (NCP) said.

BALTIC-SECURITY-ESTONIA:Exclusive-Baltic Sea shipping tax could pay for undersea cable protection, says Estonian minister