In 2022, it was a real shock for Russia that Finland and Sweden applied to join NATO and the North Atlantic Alliance fully supported their aspiration, and in an unprecedentedly accelerated manner.
Thus, starting a full-scale war against Ukraine and justifying it not only with ephemeral denazification and demilitarization, but also with the desire to prevent NATO from entering its borders, Russia received a several times larger common border with the North Atlantic Alliance thanks to these Scandinavian countries.
"Unable to somehow prevent this process, politically, diplomatically, and even more so militarily, Russia decided to take advantage of the difficult relations between applicants for NATO membership and one of the members of the alliance - Turkey - by discrediting Sweden in a religious context" - So finds military and political columnist of the "Information Resistance" group, Oleksandr Kovalenko.
According to the expert, the year 2023 began with an audacious provocation near the Turkish embassy in Stockholm - a demonstrative burning of the Koran, to which the Muslim part of the population, both in Sweden and abroad, reacted. But at the same time, this provocation was carried out very ineptly, because it was easy to see the ears of the Russian special services.
"First of all, the executor of the provocation, the person who demonstratively burned the Koran, was one Rasmus Paludan. And the coverage of this act of vandalism was carried out by the journalist Chang Johannes Frik, the owner of the online publication Nyheter idag, as well as the presenter on the SD Riks TV channel," Oleksandr Kovalenko writes.
And now a little specifics: Rasmus Paludan is a well-known Islamophobe in Sweden and not only in Sweden. He is the leader of an Islamophobic group and regularly burns the Koran in France, Denmark, and Germany.
As for Chang Johannes Frick, he worked for Russia Today (RT), reported for the Russian propaganda resource Ruptly. And the publications in his Nyheter idag constantly echoed Russian narratives, as well as the topics of the SD Riks TV program, which, by the way, belongs to the pro-Russian Swedish Social Democratic Party.
So, there are a lot of Russian elements in this provocation, and it was literally imitated by the Russian special services at every step, which suggests - what are the Swedes doing here, anyway? A pro-Russian Islamophobe, a pro-Russian journalist, a representative of a pro-Russian party... What is in this act of Swedish vandalism?
It is obvious that Russia has activated its agent network in Sweden in order to create a wave of hostility towards the Swedes from the Muslim world. And they partially succeeded, because few mass media, covering the events in Stockholm, focused on where the strings of this provocation are being pulled and who needs the aggravation of relations between Sweden and Turkey.
And that is why the enemy of world Islam is not in Stockholm, but in Moscow.
