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Russia Says It Will Take Military-Technical Steps in Response to Sweden’s NATO Accession

This photograph taken on February 27, 2024 shows an empty mast amongst member nation flags in the Cour d'Honneur of the NATO headquarters, ahead of a flag-raising ceremony for Sweden's accession to NATO, in Brussels on February 27, 2024. (AFP)
This photograph taken on February 27, 2024 shows an empty mast amongst member nation flags in the Cour d'Honneur of the NATO headquarters, ahead of a flag-raising ceremony for Sweden's accession to NATO, in Brussels on February 27, 2024. (AFP)
TT
TT

Russia Says It Will Take Military-Technical Steps in Response to Sweden’s NATO Accession

This photograph taken on February 27, 2024 shows an empty mast amongst member nation flags in the Cour d'Honneur of the NATO headquarters, ahead of a flag-raising ceremony for Sweden's accession to NATO, in Brussels on February 27, 2024. (AFP)
This photograph taken on February 27, 2024 shows an empty mast amongst member nation flags in the Cour d'Honneur of the NATO headquarters, ahead of a flag-raising ceremony for Sweden's accession to NATO, in Brussels on February 27, 2024. (AFP)

Russia said on Wednesday it would adopt unspecified military-technical and other counter measures to protect itself against Sweden joining NATO, a move it cast as aggressive and as a mistake.

Sweden cleared a last hurdle towards NATO accession on Monday after Hungary's parliament approved membership of the traditionally neutral Nordic country.

Sweden and Finland both bid to join NATO after Russia sent tens of thousands of troops into Ukraine in 2022, setting off Europe's biggest conflict since the Second World War, an attritional battle that grinds on two years later.

"We will closely monitor what Sweden will do in the aggressive military bloc, how it will realize its membership in practice ... based on this, we will build our response with retaliatory steps of a military-technical and other nature," Maria Zakharova, a spokesperson for the Russian Foreign Ministry, said.

"Sweden's accession to NATO is accompanied by the ongoing fueling of anti-Russian hysteria in the country, which, unfortunately, is encouraged by the Swedish political and military leadership, but its main source is abroad. It is not the Swedes themselves who are making the choice; this choice has been made for the Swedes," she said.

Sweden's move to join NATO was fueling tensions and militarization, she added.

Russia's embassy in Stockholm had also spoken of unspecified military and technical counter measures on its Telegram account on Tuesday depending on the extent of NATO troops and materiel deployments inside Sweden.

Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said Russia's comments were not surprising and indicated his country was unfazed.

"That's what they said when Finland joined NATO," as well," news agency TT reported Kristersson as saying on Wednesday during a trip to the town of Trollhatten in southern Sweden.

"It is well known that Russia doesn't like the fact of either Sweden or Finland being NATO members, but we make our own decisions."

He said Sweden was "on its toes" to meet any response from Russia. "We are well prepared and we see what they are doing," he said.

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Bangladesh Protest Leaders Taken from Hospital by Police

People take part in a song march to protest against the indiscriminate killings and mass arrest in Dhaka on July 26, 2024. (AFP)
People take part in a song march to protest against the indiscriminate killings and mass arrest in Dhaka on July 26, 2024. (AFP)
TT
TT

Bangladesh Protest Leaders Taken from Hospital by Police

People take part in a song march to protest against the indiscriminate killings and mass arrest in Dhaka on July 26, 2024. (AFP)
People take part in a song march to protest against the indiscriminate killings and mass arrest in Dhaka on July 26, 2024. (AFP)

Bangladeshi police detectives on Friday forced the discharge from hospital of three student protest leaders blamed for deadly unrest, taking them to an unknown location, staff told AFP.

Nahid Islam, Asif Mahmud and Abu Baker Majumder are all members of Students Against Discrimination, the group responsible for organizing this month's street rallies against civil service hiring rules.

At least 195 people were killed in the ensuing police crackdown and clashes, according to an AFP count of victims reported by police and hospitals, in some of the worst unrest of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's tenure.

All three were patients at a hospital in the capital Dhaka, and at least two of them said their injuries were caused by torture in earlier police custody.

"They took them from us," Gonoshasthaya hospital supervisor Anwara Begum Lucky told AFP. "The men were from the Detective Branch."

She added that she had not wanted to discharge the student leaders but police had pressured the hospital chief to do so.

Islam's elder sister Fatema Tasnim told AFP from the hospital that six plainclothes detectives had taken all three men.

The trio's student group had suspended fresh protests at the start of this week, saying they had wanted the reform of government job quotas but not "at the expense of so much blood".

The pause was due to expire earlier on Friday but the group had given no indication of its future course of action.

Islam, 26, the chief coordinator of Students Against Discrimination, told AFP from his hospital bed on Monday that he feared for his life.

He said that two days beforehand, a group of people identifying themselves as police detectives blindfolded and handcuffed him and took him to an unknown location.

Islam added that he had come to his senses the following morning on a roadside in Dhaka.

Mahmud earlier told AFP that he had also been detained by police and beaten at the height of last week's unrest.

Three senior police officers in Dhaka all denied that the trio had been taken from the hospital and into custody on Friday.

- Garment tycoon arrested -

Police told AFP on Thursday that they had arrested at least 4,000 people since the unrest began last week, including 2,500 in Dhaka.

On Friday police said they had arrested David Hasanat, the founder and chief executive of one of Bangladesh's biggest garment factory enterprises.

His Viyellatex Group employs more than 15,000 people according to its website, and its annual turnover was estimated at $400 million by the Daily Star newspaper last year.

Dhaka Metropolitan Police inspector Abu Sayed Miah said Hasanat and several others were suspected of financing the "anarchy, arson and vandalism" of last week.

Bangladesh makes around $50 billion in annual export earnings from the textile trade, which services leading global brands including H&M, Gap and others.

Student protests began this month after the reintroduction in June of a scheme reserving more than half of government jobs for certain candidates.

With around 18 million young people in Bangladesh out of work, according to government figures, the move deeply upset graduates facing an acute jobs crisis.

Critics say the quota is used to stack public jobs with loyalists to Hasina's Awami League.

- 'Call to the nation' -

The Supreme Court cut the number of reserved jobs on Sunday but fell short of protesters' demands to scrap the quotas entirely.

Hasina has ruled Bangladesh since 2009 and won her fourth consecutive election in January after a vote without genuine opposition.

Her government is also accused by rights groups of misusing state institutions to entrench its hold on power and stamp out dissent, including the extrajudicial killing of opposition activists.

Hasina continued a tour of government buildings that had been ransacked by protesters, on Friday visiting state broadcaster Bangladesh Television, which was partly set ablaze last week.

"Find those who were involved in this," she said, according to state news agency BSS.

"Cooperate with us to ensure their punishment. I am making this call to the nation."