The Russians Are Here - Again!

Throughout the centuries my country, Sweden, has - due to it's precarious geopolitical position - had an eternally suspicious attitude towards our immense neighbor to the east.

This situation was aggravated after Sweden lost it's position as one of the major powers in Europe in the 18th century and especially after the Swedish-Russian war ended in 1809, with Sweden proper losing a third of the realm (Finland) to Russia.

King Charles XII (1682-1718) pointing to
the East to tell us from where the enemy
will come.

Depending on who the rulers in Russia have been the situation has been better or worse, but the suspicion has always been there. Whenever we think of the risk of war or aggression, we look to the East.

Since the cold war the official defense policy of Sweden can be summed up in the phrase "non-alignment in peace aiming at neutrality in war".

That policy has served us well for half a century, but it seems to be losing support as we see the Russians, under the present president Vladimir "Little Father" Putin, becoming increasingly aggressive and militant towards it's neighbors.

During the 50's, 60's, 70's and 80's Sweden has had it's territorial borders violated repeatedly by Soviet Union/Russian submarines or or other submersibles.

Once one of them even ran aground in the archipelago of Karlskrona in the south of Sweden and created an international incident.

The "Whiskey on the rocks"-incident. 

"Soviet submarine S-363 was a Soviet Navy Whiskey-class submarine of the Baltic Fleet, which became famous under the designation U 137 when it ran aground on October 27, 1981 on the south coast of Sweden, approximately 10 km from Karlskrona, one of the larger Swedish naval bases. U137 was the unofficial Swedish name for the vessel, as the Soviets considered names of most of their submarines to be classified at the time and did not disclose them. The ensuing international incident is often referred to as the Whiskey on the rocks incident." Wikipedia

At this very moment a search is yet again going on, this time in the Stockholm archipelago, for what is suspected to be another Russian submersible.
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I am sad to admit that, like many other Swedes, I am increasingly leaning towards a change of our present defense policy and I am starting to believe in the necessity for us to apply for membership in NATO in the immediate future.

The European Union & The Malaysian Jetliner (Updated)

On Thursday May 17, 2014, Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 (en route from Amsterdam, the Netherlands, to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia) crashed in Eastern Ukraine, killing all 283 passengers and 15 crew members.

The tragedy has since lead to many speculations concerning what caused the airplane to crash, among other theories so far it is believed that the plane could have been shot down by a missile.

John Aravosis, over at the AMERICAblog, yesterday posted an interesting analysis of the event and it's political ramifications involving Russia, the European Union and the United States, see Destruction of Malaysia Airlines flight poses huge conundrum for Obama, Europe.

At this point, US intelligence thinks the Russian-backed rebels in Ukraine shot down the Malaysian airliner, and they suspect it was with a Russian (Soviet) “Buk” missile. And the Pentagon said today that it was basically inconceivable that the rebels could have learned to operate the missiles without Russian help. There’s also a serious question as to where the Russian rebels got their Russian weapons from (take a guess).

But it’s worse than that. CNN was saying yesterday that while it would have been obvious to the Russians that this was a civilian airliner, it would have been next to impossible for the Russian rebels in Ukraine to know the difference between a Ukrainian military plane and a civilian airliner. The Russians knew they couldn't tell the difference, the Russians knew they were providing weapons and training to people who were planning on shooting down planes in an area that was a major corridor for international civilian air traffic. And the Russians went ahead and trained them to shoot down the planes anyway (if, everything we now suspect ends up being true).

That’s not an accident. And it’s not simple negligence. It borders on premeditated murder.

You train someone to shoot down planes, in a zone full of civilian airliners, knowing full well that the people you’re training have no way of knowing which planes are civilian and which are military. You know they’re going to be killing innocent people, and you simply don’t care (or perhaps even want them to). That’s not a “mistake.”

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Although we are still at an early stage, and there has been no formal inquiry into the cause of the crash yet, I believe that Mr. Aravosis is on the right track. 

It will now be very interesting to see if - and how - the European Union and the United States decide to take action against Russia and "Little Father" Vladimir Putin, the president of Russia, in the latter's attempts  "to reconstitute the Soviet Union in all its deadly glory".

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Update
Malaysia Airlines has released the full names and nationalities of every person on board. There were:

• 192 Dutch, including one who had a dual Dutch/U.S. citizenship
• 44 Malaysian
• 27 Australian
• 12 Indonesian
• 10 British, including one who had dual U.K./African citizenship
• 4 German
• 4 Belgian
• 3 Filipino
• 1 Canadian
• 1 New Zealander