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| About 13.000 young Swedes are due to be recruited from 1 July 2017 |
Stockholm
Sweden has announced that compulsory military service, which was abolished in 2010, will return to force in the summer in response to developments in the security situation with the rearmament of neighboring Russia.
"The government wants a more stable way of recruiting and increasing our military capability, because the security situation has changed," Defense Minister Peter Hultkvist told the Swedish news agency TT.
According to the bill, which will be adopted by the Council of Ministers, compulsory military service will be valid in the summer for all Swedes born after 1999. It will last 11 months.
The measure is sure to be adopted in Parliament, as there is a consensus between the left-wing government and the center-right opposition.
"The new security situation is a reality that is mainly expressed in the form of the Russian show of force, which had long been underestimated and for which we found excuses," a security expert, Willem Agrel, told AFP.
In 2010, Sweden, which has not had an armed conflict on its territory for more than two centuries, abolished compulsory military service, which was first introduced in 1901, but was deemed not to meet the needs of a modern army.
It was found that military careers became very unattractive to generations who never passed through the gates of a camp.
About 13.000 young Swedes will be recruited from 1 July 2017, but after 1 January 2018 only 4.000 will be selected and called to serve each year, depending on their motivations and abilities.
Sweden is not a member of NATO, but has signed the Partnership for Peace, the program adopted in 1994 to develop military cooperation between the Atlantic Alliance and non-Atlantic countries.
In terms of defense, it is very close to neighboring Finland, which has a 1.340-kilometer border with Russia. In 2016, the two countries signed a separate military cooperation agreement with the United States.
Source: news.in.gr