On the night of March 29, a Russian airforce unit comprising of two long-range bombers and four fighters, which took off from Saint-Petersburg, carried out mock attacks on military targets in the Stockholm region and in southern Sweden.

NATO responded by deploying two Danish interceptors from Lithuania.

Svenska Dagbladet notes that even though Moscow had notified Stockholm that it would be conducting military exercises over the Easter weekend, the Swedish airforce was not on alert on the evening in question.

This oversight does not sit well with a recent declaration made by Swedish Defence Minister Karin Enström, who on January 15, announced that “the goal of [Swedish] security crisis and defence policy was to be on alert and ready to respond to unpredictable events 24/7.”