Sweden says won’t be intimidated by Putin’s warning to West

Sweden will not be intimidated by Russia’s provocations, Defence Minister Pal Jonson said Friday after President Vladimir Putin hinted at strikes on Western countries supplying weapons to Ukraine.

The Swedish minister’s remarks came as he announced “substantial funding” to Ukraine for the procurement of long-range missiles and drones.

“The Russian escalation and provocation that we’ve been noticing recently is an attempt to scare us from supporting Ukraine, and that will fail. This will not happen,” Jonson told reporters at a joint press conference in Stockholm with his Ukrainian counterpart Rustem Umerov.

“Supporting Ukraine is both the right thing to do and it’s a smart thing to do, and it’s an investment into our own security, because (Ukraine’s) security is also our security,” he said.

“Ukraine has the full right, in accordance with international law, to defend itself inside and outside of its territory, and we’re glad if we can further develop both your capability to produce long-range missiles and also long-range strike drones,” Jonson told Umerov.

Putin said Thursday that the conflict in Ukraine had characteristics of a “global” war, criticising Ukraine’s allies for granting permission for Kyiv to use Western-supplied weapons to strike targets on Russian territory.

In recent days Ukraine has fired US and UK-supplied missiles at Russian territory for the first time, escalating already sky-high tensions in the nearly three-year-long conflict.

“We consider ourselves entitled to use our weapons against the military facilities of those countries that allow their weapons to be used against our facilities,” Putin said.