As we know, we have two branches here, one is Ukraine’s eriksgata where things are accelerating faster and faster, and the other is the global escalation with a potential Russian edge aimed at us.
It’s salt or sour, light or dark, Gävle or the rest of Sweden – just as happy as one gets about all the UA successes, one gets equally tired of everything else, with some bright spots.
Today we go through the escalation we in Europe are exposed to at an ever-increasing pace. We have vividly described Russian hybrid warfare for several years, previously known as subversive activities or influence operations. In Europe, we have now reached the level of intense hybrid warfare, which then includes all of the above where Russia has begun to activate what they have in their palette and paints broadly.
During the forest fires last summer, which were facilitated by the drought, thousands were arrested in southern Europe for having started fires, some individuals had started dozens.
Before an outbreak of war in some form, we enter a twilight mode closely followed by an interstate war which will be masked as something else until it can no longer be – we are not there yet.
First, a journey through history, again.
I got so upset when I started summarizing everything that I had to take a long break and revise the post so it wouldn’t just become the world championship in whining. It is infinitely difficult not to look 20 years back in time and see the extremely bad decisions that have led us to today.
After two hours of meditation in front of the TV and a crispbread sandwich with butter and household cheese, I was calm enough to sanitize the post. You probably still feel it’s a bit too harsh.
A calibration many need – Russia has captured parties on the right and left edges in addition to individual politicians in all parties they have bought. Very many have a forgiving attitude towards the group of parties they themselves associate with, the Gävle party for example, but dislike all others.
Then it seems the far left in the West has begun to approach the last -ism, extreme Islamism.
Somewhere around there we stand today – all the -isms are sh1t; right-wing extremism, left-wing extremism/communism, and extreme Islamism.
As soon as any of the above gain political influence, it goes bananas and we see it everywhere right now in the West where the political center retreats and the edges grow. This is partly because we have had weak politicians during good times who have not done their jobs, but also due to enormous subversive activities aimed at Europe. Russia is indisputably world-leading in this mostly because it is state-prioritized and we in the West do not engage much in it.
We have many different problems created by bad decisions over a long time and what we see today are the symptoms of the underlying disease – the Russian subversive activities.
The only way to solve this is strong centrist parties with strong leaders who start cleaning up bit by bit, I personally think the Tidö coalition made good progress in that direction last term and many indicators started pointing upward in green.
Politically, Johan No.1 stands close to the center even though some have guessed in the comment thread that I must have at least voted AfS, I have to accept that I may write unclearly. I liked the old pragmatic S but they are a fleeting memory nowadays. Now Mona has reported me to the police for stalking which didn’t feel entirely fair after she got my vote, are 800 emails really something to get upset about?
During the Cold War, the KGB spent 80%-85% of its budget on influence operations and subversive activities in the West as it gave great returns for little money.
The university world was an easy target – young adults with strong opinions and at that time the Soviets understood that they could radicalize people in under a year and then they had total tunnel vision. Then adult life usually knocks and opinions change except for a group of hardcore believers for life, they stayed and worked their way up the food chain.
During the Cold War it was a bit more divided but today it seems GRU, FSB, and SVR all operate in the West and they probably do it because they can enrich themselves enormously at the same time. They mix business with state-prioritized subversive activities and get rich in the process since no rules apply to them at all.
Putin does not hesitate to carry out political murders if needed in the West. During the Cold War, a truce was reached between the security services quite early because “an eye for an eye” applied so no one was safe. An agreement not to touch each other’s personnel except for arrests and prisoner exchanges when unavoidable, otherwise they would have wiped each other out and no one could make a career.
In the Soviet Union, the state allied with the Russian mafia against the citizens, and in the West they have close contacts with organized crime not only for their own operations but also to destabilize us.
After the revolution in 1917, many communist thinkers asked why it succeeded in the Soviet Union and not in the rest of Europe. Communism was supposed to be global, not just in the Soviet Union, but it went surprisingly badly as soon as they tried. In Sweden, they lived a declining existence despite promises of a fantastic life if only the oppressed masses made a revolution.
The answer was that society was too resilient, we had our culture, traditions, and administration so even if they got a government in place, this government had the rest of society against it and could not get away with anything.
The solution to the problem became that they had to erase our culture and then “the long march through the institutions” which was then carried out by the group of revolutionaries who were not hit by adult life and became soccer dads instead. The will for revolution simply did not exist so then you have to start from the bottom and march revolutionaries through the administration from within until they sit in decision-making positions and can create the environment for revolution. Then you have to try to erase the citizens’ culture, traditions, and connection to religion as well – then and there they would start to become receptive to the liberating revolution.
Of course, a revolution is facilitated if the citizens are economically poor, insecure, and in other ways have no hope at all.
Then and there the Soviet utopia can come and save everyone, but only after having first worsened the country enough so it was possible. If no one wants to be saved, we damn well have to destroy so much for them that they need to be saved seems to be central to the whole philosophy.
In Sweden, there was a shift to the right of the center of the working class since the 90s, I guess. They simply had it too good – they were more interested in renovating the house, buying a new car, and what the interest rates would be than making a revolution. One could say that our socialism had won the fight by knockout and should have been happy, but at the same time made themselves politically irrelevant on the issues they had driven?
Now the same modus operandi probably applies for a fascist takeover, and since the horseshoe theory is real – communism and fascism are just two different names for the same reign of terror, Islamism is naturally included there as well. Don’t get hung up on whether it’s left or right, they are all extremisms that are bad for the country. After texts like this, I usually get comments that I am completely wrong about *insert any party*, but I’m actually trying to paint the whole picture here.
Today in 2026, Russia is not communist in the slightest, they are a criminal clan that happens to have a country – but they have not abandoned their will to divide and rule in Europe.
We can safely assume that they have dusted off all the old hybrid plans from the Cold War and are running them on repeat.
Europe is also full to the brim with filthy rich oligarchs, Russian-connected companies, and hidden black money in our banking systems.
Few people in Europe today support Russia out of ideological conviction; the majority do it for money in their accounts, I guess. Except for a few who still dream of the revolution that never came.
You no longer get a suitcase full of dollar bills in a park, your wife/husband starts a limited company, goes once a month to an empty meeting room in Stockholm, and invoices a million per occasion as long as you do what you’re supposed to for your handler. The tax agency gets its tax and is satisfied, the customer is an established company so no eyebrows are raised – legal and congratulations on your side gig you can retire on.
All you need to do is small favors, and when you first hesitated, five gang criminals stood outside your door admiring the house on a Friday night – even if you know you’re doing wrong, you must always think about the children’s safety first, that is taking responsibility.
Tim Pool in the USA changed his mind and started praising Ukraine, but his umbrella organization took Russian money, and each writer received 4 million SEK annually for their work.
If you remember the FBI and their list of 2,850 (or something) Russian-linked debaters, they said 600 were in the USA but then it went quiet. Many were probably in Europe?
Hand on heart, wouldn’t 4 million SEK per year be attractive even for you to do nothing illegal?
Because this does not seem illegal at all, no one is arrested except maybe a rare case, and then it’s pure espionage?
On social media, Russian agents pay anyone a few thousand kronor to perform acts, so gone are the agent rings that first had to learn Swedish and work their way up over 15 years before they were valuable. Those rings consisted of 3-4 people, I think, and helped each other higher up in the administration. If someone stood in the way, a big scandal was created with some minor, or they suddenly died of a heart attack and the field was cleared. During the Cold War, no one knew who they could trust and Russian agents were high up in our security services throughout Europe – total paranoia.
Today it seems you can buy your way into the levels that previously took many years, so today we have the far right and far left with connections to Russia paired with some politicians within established parties who can sabotage everything that is good for us.
Besides that, Russia has a direct line to gang crime and the criminal clans that work for cash.
The broad center is torn apart by destroying the target country – in the last 20 years, Russia has amused itself by polarizing groups, worsening, for example, electricity production, creating increasingly complicated rules/charges that make companies’ competitiveness more difficult, and all sorts of other things they do solely to complicate and worsen.
Then when things get worse, they blame “the rich,” “immigrants,” “capitalism,” and similar, exactly everyone has something they feel must be *insert any group*’s fault. And finally, they promise that everything will be solved if only the citizens take to the streets or vote out the lousy governments.
This is well described in various Soviet manuals on how to destabilize countries from within (or companies) – start demanding investigations, discuss peripheral issues, throw in constant curveballs until everything is paralyzed and nothing gets done.
Sit in meetings and talk as much as you can about everything except the issue at hand, put in constant vetoes, say you need time to consider, and make sure absolutely nothing happens on important issues.
We also have a perfect situation today in Sweden where we have many different groups and identities, and if you can get everyone to demand special treatment all the time, very little gets done because as soon as you do something, you have stepped on at least one other group’s toes hard.
What we see throughout Europe is that the broad center is becoming weaker while the far right and far left grow stronger. This is because citizens see the problems and governments have failed for a long time, so they do the only thing they legally can – vote for something they believe can solve the problems.
Then when voices start rising that we must ban parties that are doing too well, a revolutionary fire is ignited among all those who have tried to vote for them for improvement because it is undemocratic and Russia starts cashing in.
These parties are the biggest con artists there are, and as soon as they get power, the promised better becomes even worse, then we play the record again and blame everything on *insert any* and promise that if only they get to continue, then damn.
Europe is under attack from all sides, no one wants a strong Europe – and we are well on our way to becoming a strong Europe again.
The USA needs Europe as a buyer of their national debt, weapons, and security preferably at an overprice besides that we assist with military capability when the USA needs it – none of that do we do.
Russia wants its Soviet borders back and for us to stay away from Ukraine – we agree to none of that.
China wants us to buy their products as obedient consumers – we have started to stop doing that and try to manufacture ourselves.
You have seen the USA and Trump rush for something, they have done more in two years than what should be done in ten years.
You see that interest rates are soaring and that something usually breaks somewhere, since the USA has been working on this for at least two years and Europe is reactive, they are ahead.
If it comes down to the USA and Europe, the USA chooses Europe to crash every day of the week, if the USA falls the petrodollar falls and Europe will immediately take over as a safe haven for many years to come.
The USA is not ready to give this up yet, they do what is good for them. Whether it succeeds remains to be seen.
Right now they probably need the stock market, Europe, and many others to rotate into US government bonds and then inflate away their enormous debt?
Russia, on the other hand, has completely stalled in Ukraine and is well on its way to being beaten in a fair war. The next best option would be an escalation towards Europe in some form that coincides with the start of a financial crisis to trigger capital flight from Europe to the USA. This benefits Russia and the USA, where the USA, in return, tries to make Europe lose interest in Ukraine and promises to ease sanctions on Russia, I guess?
Russia can create chaos and gradually install pro-Russian governments in country after country as the situation worsens for Europe.
Now Russia is very cornered and thus takes risks, however, they forfeited the chance to succeed militarily by being too late to the game and starting with hybrid warfare instead – that is my opinion.
During the spring, Johan No.1 suggested that all countries except Spain should block state-supported trafficking/migration – except Spain – then Ceuta happened.
Johan No.1 also suggested that Sanchez would not last long – now there is an election on November 26.
In Ireland, the government has incurred the people’s wrath, and during a general strike, they tried to deploy the military who refused – an intense aftermath debate is ongoing there now.
In the UK, Kier Starmer fell in no time as we guessed would happen, and now Burnham is starting to be on shaky ground.
Many lean ideologically in one direction, and if you are left of center, you do not look kindly on Orban but may think Sanchez should be given a chance – and vice versa.
After far too many years, we got rid of Orban, who blocked every law or decision that disadvantages Russia – you’d almost have to look hard to find a more openly pro-Russian traitor. He has leaked all the information he could directly to Putin every day from all the secret meetings he attended. His ministers even sat and WhatsApped their Russian contacts directly during meetings asking for instructions; this came out before their election down there.
Both groups do the same thing but on their respective sides outside the center.
I have really tried to understand Sanchez’s motivations but have not succeeded – first, as many people as the population of Ceuta arrive within a few days, and chaos ensues with looting, rapes, and riots.
The central government in Madrid fails to act, and maybe 15,000 remain when they say everyone has left. Every citizen and the political leadership in Ceuta are begging on their bare knees for help, but very little happens, so schools remained closed and citizens locked themselves in their homes without being able to buy food.
At some point, the Spanish mainland has had enough, and there are huge demonstrations of several million people against Sanchez over Ceuta. Then, sure enough, riot police and military show up, tear gas is thick, and batons fly. The same police who should have restored order in Ceuta but never did.
The government loudly chants that fascists must be fought; we hear this more and more from different countries where the taxpaying majority society (regardless of nationality) has reached the point where, out of pure frustration, they take to the streets – then THEY must be suppressed, the taxpayers who are now the least fascist. Is it really them who have drifted away, or is it politics that has drifted away from doing what is best for the country and its citizens?
Sanchez has an obligation to pursue policies that are for his country’s citizens, the broad taxpaying group regardless of nationality.
He does exactly the opposite.
Why?
In country after country, there is talk of billionaire taxes, tax increases, new rental regulations granting tenants almost perpetual tenancy rights, takeover of housing companies at half the market price – all to provide better welfare and housing for everyone. And these countries already have some of the highest taxes in the world, which should more than cover the welfare they claim to want to create.
Why don’t we already have this welfare they promise if we have already paid for it?
Granted, throughout Europe, there is a situation where more and more people use welfare, so the proportion paying in is smaller today than 30 years ago – but it is actually the responsibility of our politicians to manage this just as I, as a family provider, have a limit to how many can sit around my dinner table at my expense.
Generally, corruption is starting to spread in Sweden; you are probably following Jens Nylander who just posted that every year companies connected to municipal politicians invoice 50-60 billion SEK, often in the municipality where they operate. There you have another large expense item that is unfortunately very difficult to handle. Calculations show that corruption of public funds costs over 350 billion SEK per year, so no small change, and Jens’s 60 billion SEK are not included at all because he looks at municipal and state corruption that goes to companies or individuals offering services and not the outright theft we have from municipal social accounts, the social insurance agency, and others.
Then we have those farthest to the right – throw out ALL immigrants. The 75%-80% who have integrated and work probably feel uncomfortable with the rhetoric of recent years that only contributes to polarization.
Until the 80s-90s, the Social Democrats’ line was to raise wages for the working class and that companies paid their share for welfare. I support that; I support that the first 250,000 SEK/year should be tax-free. Having a salary you can live on is fundamental, and that it is enough to live in as well. The old pragmatic Social Democrats solved this with Own Homes, for example – why is that impossible today?
Or our corporate wonders, Volvo, IKEA, Ericsson, Gävle Puts och Städ, Scania, SAAB Aero, SAS.
Nuclear power, twelve reactors over some decades where we learned from scratch.
Hydropower and the electricity system.
The rail network, the Million Programme (maybe not the best).
The Armed Forces – 10% of the country’s citizens under arms at full mobilization.
All this, apparently, we could afford with a lower tax burden than today, and it worked significantly better than today.
A country’s welfare is built by companies that employ people; if they do well, they hire more. Over what, 20-25 years, we have sent all manufacturing to China, shut down the oil industry and others to the tune of net zero – and then we buy everything from other countries outside Europe because we need it anyway.
This is absolute madness and some kind of voluntary strangulation that the rest of the world just laughs at. When Spain got so much gold from its raids in South America that the whole country stopped producing and just consumed until the gold ran out and they fell into eternal siesta, it almost pales in comparison.
Now Germany’s car industry is wobbling, the UK has near power outages every winter, and electricity prices are so high that energy-intensive industries can no longer sell their more expensive products because everyone buys Chinese instead. Previously, this was a choice of slightly lower price but poorer quality. Now the price difference is so high that China almost sells too easily, and the German car industry is dying to the tune of double the price.
Not everything is Russia of course, but they are very satisfied together with the USA and China.
The worse it gets, the louder voices we hear calling for tax increases so we can improve welfare when it is exactly the opposite; in the end, companies start to go bankrupt and there are fewer jobs instead – then the tax base plummets.
The 25% with the most assets in Sweden account for +60% of the tax revenue; if they start emigrating, there will definitely not be more money in the state treasury. Several countries in Europe have understood where we are headed and have attractive tax reductions for the “rich” to move there. Now “the rich” is a bad word; those targeted are also all those who have built their business and worked themselves to death all their lives, those who have managed to save a little on the stock market from an ordinary salary – everyone who has saved. All of these already pay some of the highest taxes in the world in Sweden and have stayed in the country so far, but it has never been easier than today to move away from Sweden and into the EU. An untested scenario thus, and no one knows how it will turn out before we try.
Now we have an excellent example of a Russian influence operation that has just begun where they probably seized the opportunity and you never miss a good crisis, the “school riots” in France. They have now spread over half the country and are wild riots with destruction that the police can no longer handle, so the military has been called in.
Several hundred thousand are participating and it has just spread to Belgium and the UK. Russia has the media apparatus, resources, personnel on site, and the right manual for the right situation if they intend to create chaos. They know exactly how to best capitalize on situations like this.
Le Pen’s party is the favorite ahead of next year’s election, and if this just continues, they will probably get their own majority. The party is proven to have connections to Russia and upon election victory, they will likely cut support to Ukraine immediately.
Moldova, Romania, Bulgaria are all countries where Russia tried to get their candidate to win by all available means.
The EU has been unwise; we allowed any crooks to rule down in the Balkans as long as they voted as the EU wanted, and then we sent billion-euro subsidies. This led to them being able to firmly establish their power very strongly, and the EU contributed to a criminal clan rule in several countries – the citizens of those countries hold us responsible for this, by the way.
Then the EU tries to counter all this with a more authoritarian society; right now the focus has been directed at those who feel that migration is too high, and in the UK they began imposing heavy penalties for thought crimes. People like Mr Bean and John Cleese, the old renowned comedians, have fought hard against this.
They are still trying to pass Chatcontrol 2.0, which would allow all your communication to be intercepted without suspicion of crime to save vulnerable children.
– Can it be abused? Yes, absolutely.
– Will it be abused? Guaranteed. We are only one simple majority decision away from banning criticism of politicians, for example, with the justification that it is threats, hate, or incitement against the group of politicians. Something like that can be quite comfortably manufactured during a term.
They are smart too – politicians and officials in key positions cannot be intercepted under this law, so not equal for all, only for us.
You can ask yourselves if far-right governments would have used the same tools if they got the chance?
In the end, the Metropolitan Police chose not to continue with it; in the UK, the police solve maybe 10% of serious crimes but are heavily prioritized and heavily recruited to trawl social media for thought crimes that could lead to a couple of years in prison. Even though the legal basis was highly questionable, and that is why MetPolice finally backed down.
Will it get better if we get governments further to the right in Spain or the UK?
No, it will not, because they have exactly the same modus operandi – the only ones we have reason to assume will refrain are centrist governments.
The broad centrist parties are helpless and unable to win back voters.
Parties like Afs in Sweden are directly connected to Russia, and the possible governing party V is not much better with its connection to Islamism. Within SD, there are definitely people who play double with Russia.
In other parties, there are infiltrators to varying degrees, and this has been an issue for several terms. “Sleepers” who sneak forward and only vote when needed. We do not know who they are, but after politics, one could see where they work and who they associate with – Merkel, Schröder, Scholz, Sarkozy, and Jeremy Corbyn it was.
Is this something new?
No, it looked like this until the wall fell, and Putin, who ran exactly this operation from East Germany during the Cold War, has probably just continued?
Now to potential escalation after this broadside, which I understand may seem a bit whiny, I apologize but it broke through.
Russia, which supposedly had zero reserves according to everyone, has just held a high-tech exercise with 45,000 soldiers and a fully integrated drone and anti-drone weapon system. The goal of the exercise was to establish a buffer zone in a neighboring country, and experts agree that it was somewhere intended.
Now they will hold two staff exercises in Belarus, and the exercise description includes the word “PEACE” probably five times.
I ask the question to EVERYONE – a united analyst corps and media have stubbornly claimed that “Russia has no reserves.” A 45,000-strong force that can wage war in 2026, is that a reserve or not?
The follow-up question is whether all other analysts and media are complete idiots or if there is Russian influence involved as well?
Russia has learned the extremely hard way how to wage war in 2026. In Ukraine, they no longer want to sacrifice their better units, but THEY HAVE RESERVES, I have been nagging about this for I don’t know how long, and now we saw it.
Now they showed that they can muster 45,000 in a combined arms warfare exercise with Rubicon drone weapons in all categories. Moreover, the entire evil team participated with observers or specialists – Iran, China, India, North Korea, and a few more.
How far they would get in the Baltics I cannot answer, and neither can anyone else. But we KNOW that during 2025-2026, about a dozen Ukrainian drone operators caused mass destruction in all our exercises where they participated – Europe is NOT ready for 2026.
Not infrequently, the exercises had to be stopped, the Ukrainians sent to McDonald’s, and then they had to show how to win a war.
Germany, Poland, and the Baltics now want to show strength – there is mechanized movement where they are just big targets, nothing else. When the shooters dismount and advance – big targets, nothing else.
You can only move like that under your own drone and anti-drone umbrella; if you don’t have that, you should crawl between burrows with leafy branches on your helmet and mine yourself in.
As was just written, progress is still being made with entrenched shooting positions and mines, and this is where the Balts themselves come in; if they just manage to dig in in the forests of eastern Ukraine, Russia will get stuck quite quickly, and from what I can see, they seem to be on the alert now.
And Europe has clearly shown that in the event of conflict, we will pave over Kaliningrad and take out the Baltic Fleet.
So now it remains to be seen whether Putin will refrain or not – the decision lies with this, to say the least, unstable despot who is already under enormous pressure, and all preparations have already been made.
Now you might feel that all of the above about Russian subversive activities is exaggerated and unreasonable, but then I must remind you that this has only just begun so far. As long as the war in Ukraine continues, Russia will increase the pressure on us, and the lowest hanging fruit on the whole tree is sabotage against our LNG storage and electricity transmission this winter. If nothing at all happens but the war in Ukraine goes on, I will eat my words here in the editorial and close the account on johanno1.se, but open Johan No.2 instead and pretend nothing happened.
An entirely unrelated question to the highly valued readers besides whether you were satisfied with Johan’s travel tips the other day and have already booked your weekend trip to Athens – I have started working on a first chapter for; Dengamle – a not always so successful journey through world history.
This is now completely detached from my attempts to lure Dengamle back into the thread with lots of exciting stories and has taken on a life of its own. It is a way for me to build a story where I can dive into different events and write from Dengamle’s perspective in the way I enjoy writing. Dengamle also has the ability to unknowingly drift around and become a central figure in the midst of events without having understood why.
I get stuck in something which will probably become a chapter or two long, and then move on to the next century or something. Trying to do a two-year preliminary work where the skeleton of a whole book is ready and then filling it out would have stopped at half the skeleton before I got tired. The common thread then becomes Dengamle where the first chapter is about why he will live so long, and the start of his many-hundred-year journey. You guessed right, a lot of alcohol involved when he got extended life.
I plan to post the first chapter for feedback when it is ready and just understand how you as readers perceive it. Wild guess is that there is a lot for me to work on 😀
If MXT doesn’t block me just for posting the worst text ever, I plan to continue building one chapter at a time over time as long as it’s fun to write and it is read.
The day it happens will then be unrelated to Ukraine but I hope for your understanding.
Cliffhanger – maybe there will even be a chapter about Gävle, there seems to be a lot to dig into up there apparently.
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