“But we are not naive, we see the development around us and we must make conclusions from that situation,” he added.

Hultqvist added that the possibility of Sweden storing nuclear weapons is not on the agenda. Should Sweden be allowed into the transatlantic military alliance, the biggest change would be to take part in NATO exercises and serve as a deterrent to Russia.

“The whole idea to be a member of NATO is also that we will have NATO representations in different sort of exercises and activities on Swedish soil,” the defense minister said. “I think we can build a higher level and higher threshold towards Russia with NATO membership.”