KREMLIN INFLUENCE AND THE DESTABILIZATION OF SWEDEN’S DEMOCRACY: Investigating Russia’s Weaponization of Markets and Influence Operations, Swedish “Enablers,” and the Threat of Oligarchic Capitalism

This four-year project will study critical, yet often less-than-visible, non-military threats to Sweden’s security posed by the Russian state and Kremlin operatives.

These operatives weaponize markets and wage influence operations to gain strategic footholds that further the Kremlin’s geopolitical and economic interests.

They depend on “enablers,” Western professionals in advanced service sectors and civic/political actors who help penetrate markets and launder money and images. While research on these threats in some European countries and the US is growing, little work has been done in Sweden.

Through three integrated phases of empirical research that moves from sectoral analyses to organizational case studies, the project will study the practices, mechanisms, and networks through which Kremlin operatives are penetrating markets and selected civic/political institutions in Sweden, and, via Swedish enablers, in Europe and the US.

The study employs qualitative methods, network analysis, and data analytics and assembles scholars with investigative expertise in banking, finance, elites, social network analysis, and politics.

It will build capacity in crucial emergent fields of weaponized corruption, the enabling industry, and oligarchic capitalism; produce a series of scholarly and policy articles and a book; and provide a solid bedrock for the implementation of targeted measures to safeguard Sweden’s political and economic institutions and boost national preparedness.