Russian invasion

Sanctions
Russian businessmen capitalize on Western withdrawals

Russian businessmen make a lot of money from Western companies leaving the country. This is what the CEO of the Russian car company Avtodom, Andrey Olkhovsky, tells SvD.

In connection with the sanctions against Russia and the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, many companies chose to leave. Now Olkhovsky is not allowed to sell Mercedes-Benz cars, for example. But the industry in the country has changed and is now producing its own cars instead. And the factories that Western companies left behind meant a bargain for businessmen like Olkhovsky. He bought the Swedish Autoliv factories for an undisclosed sum when they left Russia last spring, and now he is making a “big buck,” writes SvD.

– This is business. Someone has to continue production when there is demand and companies choose to leave, says Olkhovsky.

The world's response
Task: German priority gives Ukraine faster support

The US is prioritizing Germany over Switzerland when it comes to deliveries of the Patriot air defense system, so that the systems can reach Ukraine more quickly. This is reported by sources for the Wall Street Journal.

Switzerland was originally first in the American queue, but the priority has been changed so that Germany can send two already existing systems. Therefore, the next delivery will go to Berlin.

An agreement was recently presented that means that several NATO countries will buy systems from the US that will then be delivered to Kyiv as the final destination. According to the information, more agreements like the one with Germany will be presented in the near future.

Swedish reactions
Linde self-critical – should have acted harder against Putin

Russia invaded Georgia in 2008 and six years later the Crimean peninsula was annexed. Sweden's former Foreign Minister Ann Linde (S) regrets that she and her colleagues did not react "much, much more forcefully" when they could, she tells SvD.

Canceling summits and imposing minor sanctions was not enough.

– From the seizure of Crimea to the full-scale invasion, 12,000 Ukrainians were killed. That's not a small number.

Linde believes that the moderate measures contributed to Putin daring to invade Ukraine eight years later.