Sweden summons Russian ambassador over NATO warning

The Swedish Foreign Ministry has summoned the Russian ambassador to Stockholm after Moscow said it would take “retaliatory measures” should the Scandinavian country join the NATO military alliance.

On Friday, Sweden’s Foreign Minister Margot Wallstrom asked the Russian envoy, Viktor Tatarintsev, to elaborate on the comments recently made by Russia’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova.

“We are an independent state and we make our own security policy decisions independently ... We do not accept threats and I have summoned the Russian ambassador to ask questions and get an explaation,” Wallstrom told journalists.

The remarks came a day after Zakharova said, “Swedish membership in NATO would have politico-military and foreign policy consequences, and would require retaliatory measures from Russia.”

“Defense and national security strategy is up to each sovereign state to decide. However, we still consider Sweden’s policy of non-participation in military blocs to be an important factor for the stability of northern Europe,” added the Russian official.

Sweden has a longstanding policy of neutrality, meaning that it is not member to any military alliance and seldom participates in military operations.

On June 18, Tatarintsev told Swedish-language daily newspaper Dagens Nyheter that if Sweden were to abandon its neutrality and join NATO, Russia would adopt “counter measures.”

Sweden’s ruling centre-left coalition, which is made up of the Social Democrats and the Green Party, is historically against NATO membership. A recent poll, though, has suggested that nearly one in three Swedes think the country should join the Western contingent in the wake of Russia’s increased military presence in the Baltic Sea.

Relations between Russia and the West have been strained since Ukraine’s Black Sea peninsula of Crimea joined the Russian Federation following a referendum back in March 2014. Relations soured further after Ukraine launched military operations in April 2014 to silence pro-Russian forces in the country’s eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk.

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