Sweden to Contribute Up to 3 Warships to Reinforced NATO Presence in the Baltic

Sweden Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson speaks to the Associated Press during an interview at the Estonian Knighthood House in Tallinn, Estonia, on Dec. 17, 2024. (AP Photo/Sergei Grits)
Sweden Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson speaks to the Associated Press during an interview at the Estonian Knighthood House in Tallinn, Estonia, on Dec. 17, 2024. (AP Photo/Sergei Grits)
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Sweden to Contribute Up to 3 Warships to Reinforced NATO Presence in the Baltic

Sweden Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson speaks to the Associated Press during an interview at the Estonian Knighthood House in Tallinn, Estonia, on Dec. 17, 2024. (AP Photo/Sergei Grits)
Sweden Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson speaks to the Associated Press during an interview at the Estonian Knighthood House in Tallinn, Estonia, on Dec. 17, 2024. (AP Photo/Sergei Grits)

Sweden will contribute up to three warships to a NATO effort to increase the alliance's presence in the Baltic Sea as it tries to guard against sabotage of underwater infrastructure, the government said Sunday.

The Swedish military also will contribute an ASC 890 surveillance aircraft, the government said in a statement. And the country's coast guard will contribute four ships to help monitor the Baltic, with a further seven vessels on standby.

Sweden became the Western military alliance’s 32nd member in March. It followed neighboring Finland into NATO after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The government said this will be the first time that Sweden as a NATO ally contributes armed forces to the alliance's defense and deterrence, The AP reported.

The decision comes as a string of incidents in the Baltic has heightened concerns about possible Russian activities in the region.

The undersea cables and pipelines that crisscross the sea link Nordic, Baltic and central European countries, promote trade, energy security and, in some cases, reduce dependence on Russian energy resources.

Ten Baltic Sea cables have been damaged since 2023, affecting Estonia, Finland, Sweden, Germany and Lithuania. At least two incidents involved ships later accused of dragging their anchors.

Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said at an annual security conference Sunday that Sweden is not at war, but there is also no peace, Swedish news agency TT reported.



Ukraine Says Ceasefire Accords Brokered by US Take Immediate Effect

 Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskiy speaks during a press conference, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, in Kyiv, Ukraine March 25, 2025. (Reuters)
Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskiy speaks during a press conference, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, in Kyiv, Ukraine March 25, 2025. (Reuters)
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Ukraine Says Ceasefire Accords Brokered by US Take Immediate Effect

 Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskiy speaks during a press conference, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, in Kyiv, Ukraine March 25, 2025. (Reuters)
Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskiy speaks during a press conference, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, in Kyiv, Ukraine March 25, 2025. (Reuters)

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said a truce with Russia covering the Black Sea and energy strikes was effective immediately on Tuesday and that he would ask Donald Trump to supply weapons and sanction Russia if Moscow broke the deals.

The United States said earlier it had made separate agreements with Kyiv and Moscow to ensure safe navigation in the Black Sea and to implement a ban on attacks on energy facilities in the two countries.

"The US side considers that our agreements come into force after their announcement by the US side," Zelenskiy told reporters at a news conference in Kyiv, adding that he did not trust Russia to honor the arrangements.

The accords are the first ones aimed at halting energy strikes since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022, triggering Europe's biggest conflict since World War Two. The fighting rages on across a 1,000-km (600-mile) front line.

The Ukrainian leader cautioned that the agreements did not set out a course of action if Russia broke them and that he would appeal directly to the US president if that happened.

"We have no faith in the Russians, but we will be constructive," he said.

He said US officials saw the energy ceasefire as covering attacks on other civilian infrastructure too and that ports should be covered by the Black Sea agreement.

Nightly Russian drone attacks have been a feature of life in big Ukrainian cities for many months. So have power outages as missiles have hammered the power grid. Kyiv has used drones to hit Russian oil refineries to raise the costs for its much larger foe.

Ukraine, Zelenskiy said, presented US officials during talks with a list of facilities that should be covered by the moratorium on energy strikes.

The deals were announced following two days of talks in Saudi Arabia between US and Ukrainian officials on the one hand and US and Russian officials on the other.

Ukrainian Defense Minister Rustem Umerov, who took part in the talks, wrote on X: "All parties agreed to develop measures for implementing the Presidents’ agreement to ban strikes against energy facilities of Ukraine and Russia."

The White House said in a joint statement with Russia that it would help Moscow restore its access to the world market for agricultural and fertilizer exports.

Zelenskiy said Ukraine had not agreed to put that in its statement with the US side.

"We believe that this is a weakening of position and sanctions," he said.

BLACK SEA WARNING

Kyiv will regard any movement of Russian naval vessels beyond the east of the Black Sea as a violation of the spirit of the agreements, Umerov said.

In such an event, Kyiv will have the right to self-defense, he said, implying that Ukraine could retaliate.

Kyiv, which has used naval drones and missiles to push Russia's Black Sea fleet back towards the east of the Black Sea, would welcome third countries supporting the implementation of the accords, Umerov said.

"The American side really wanted all of this not to fail, so they did not want to go into many details. But in any case we will have to understand answers to each of the details," Zelenskiy said.

Zelenskiy said that Türkiye could potentially be involved in monitoring in the Black Sea while Middle Eastern countries could track the energy truce, though he noted that had not been discussed yet with those countries.

Separately, Zelenskiy said the United States had presented Ukraine with an expanded version of a bilateral minerals deal that went beyond the initial framework agreement that the two sides agreed earlier but never signed.

Zelenskiy had been expected to sign a minerals deal opening up Ukraine's critical minerals to the United States during talks with Trump in the Oval Office last month, but did not when the meeting spiraled into acrimony in front of the world's media.

Zelenskiy said he had not been able to fully review the new proposal in detail yet, but that it did not include greater US involvement in Ukraine's nuclear power sector, something that has been floated by Washington in recent days.