How Sweden Would Easily Crush a Russian Invasion

Sweden is a land that is famous for many things, like meatballs, IKEA, PewDiePie, extremely attractive people, and vast remote mountain spaces. But these days, one thing that Sweden is also becoming famous for has nothing to do with dream girlfriends or dream vacations. And lately, the Swedes have moved from hitting the ski slopes, to hitting the news headlines - in large part due to Russia - Sweden’s pesky nearby neighbor, who has the whole Baltic Sea neighborhood in an uproar, and who has the

Swedish government expressing some very real concerns that their nation could be one of the next to be invaded by Russia. Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, we’ve begun to see some changes in Sweden. Some of these changes are sad harbingers of the reality of the period of world history that we are now all entering, whether we like it or not, such as instructions that have been given to Swedish schoolchildren about what to do if Russia bombs their school, the way that Russia shelled over 1000 sc

hools in Ukraine during just the first few months of their invasion there. But other changes are, frankly, pretty cool. Like how Sweden has responded to Russia’s demands that they stay out of the conflict in Ukraine by instead choosing to look Russia dead in the eye and say “no” - sending high-tech weapons for Ukraine to use against Russia, and ending nearly 200 years of neutrality by almost immediately applying to join NATO, something that they very well may not have done had Russia not told th

em that they weren’t allowed to do it. Russia apparently forgot that, despite Sweden’s recent neutrality, they were threatening the descendants of the vikings - masters of the sea, and experts at controlling their coastal waters - people with a long history of not being terrified by threats, but instead becoming emboldened by them. And since receiving Russia’s threats, instead of rolling over on their backs like other nations that I should but won’t mention by name, Sweden has instead become the

geopolitical version of John Wick - the man who tried to retire from conflict, but who also wasn’t going to just let Russians attack his home and his dog without consequences. The Russians approached him at the gas station thinking he’d be a pushover to get whatever they wanted, and here we are today, and those movies still just won’t stop being produced. And in the same way, Sweden is no pushover either - and just because you strive to live a peaceful life, that doesn’t mean you aren’t capable

of being strong when you have to be. So let’s get into some specifics about why Sweden has been willing to be so bold with Russia, and how Sweden could absolutely crush a Russian invasion in a defensive war. At first, you might not think that would be possible. Russia is literally the largest nation on the planet, at least in geographical terms, and has close to 150 million people living there - or at least that’s how many they had before they started their war against Ukraine and lost a huge p

ercentage of their young male population, who either fled overseas from the draft or…became victims of the draft. All that aside, Sweden is still, especially in comparison to Russia, a rather small nation by most standards. In terms of geographical size, it's average - though larger than many people realize, as the fifth largest nation in all of Europe. But in terms of population, Sweden is only home to about 10 and a half million people - for perspective, less than one sixth of the amount of pe

ople in the UK, which Sweden is geographically nearly twice the size of. And Sweden only has about 7% as many people as Russia. As far as military goes, Sweden’s armed forces are just a drop in the ocean compared to the Russian Federation - with Sweden boasting only about 57,000 combined active, reserve, and home guard personnel, or only about 4.5% of Russia’s estimate of nearly 1,300,000 - something which makes the prospect of a conflict between the two nations at first feel…like an open and sh

ut case, to say the least. But all of that changes when you actually take a closer look at both of these nations, something which reveals that Sweden is a heck of a lot stronger than most people think. Because size isn’t everything. It’s how strategically you can use the forces you have that really matters at the end of the day. As we take a closer look at Sweden’s absolutely John Wick-like international status, a quick word from the sponsor that made the research, animation, and editing for thi

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. Now back to our video. Russia might dwarf Sweden in size, but when it comes to defense, Sweden’s small size is, seemingly paradoxically, actually an advantage. Whereas Russia is extremely large, that size also means that Russia must constantly defend its huge expansive borders - something which is expensive and difficult to do, eating up a huge percentage of their defense budget just to maintain the status quo. Alongside rampant corruption, this has contributed to Russia’s inability to progres

s its military capabilities into the modern era at scale, even though they have quite a large defense budget, since no matter how much money they spend, a huge portion will always need to go into the operational expenses of training, feeding, fueling and paying a large army rather than into research and development. In the short term, a large army makes you a powerful nation. In the long term, if your economy cannot sustain both a large army and sufficient research and development, focusing on s

ize rather than capability can leave you too far behind to ever catch up again. And since you have to keep the large army to maintain your large borders, such a situation means that your capabilities eventually erode over time, while other smaller and richer nations are progressing quickly. It’s the geopolitical equivalent to why large behemoth corporations with huge expense sheets and aging infrastructure often fail to innovate, while small startups working from laptops in small rented office s

paces can often scale quickly and overtake the established corporate giants when it comes to building the next technological breakthrough, since the giant companies are stretched thin and unable to focus. And this geographical reality has contributed to the situation Russia is now in with Ukraine, where it is struggling to make progress against a nation that is far smaller and far poorer, but that has had the advantages of using even just a small amount of technologically advanced western equipm

ent. But Sweden has found itself in the exact opposite situation to Russia. In Ukraine, Sweden isn’t the one getting crushed by superior technology. They’re one of the ones supplying it. Since Sweden’s borders are much smaller, and relatively easy to defend, Sweden has been able to focus on investing in military depth rather than just spending money year after year on maintaining operational breadth - giving them a technologically superior military even though they spend just a fraction of what

Russia does on defense. And since Sweden is almost entirely focused on defense, with no interest in invading other nations, they’ve been able to optimize even further by honing down the categories of weapon systems they’re focused on developing, giving them deep expertise in the defensive technologies that would allow them to defend their specific territory, and making Sweden among the best in the world in the categories they do choose to focus on. While Russia needs to build equipment for every

conceivable terrain across the two continents it exists on, along with a huge swathe of different climate conditions, leading to an almost incalculable number of scenarios they need to be prepared for, Sweden is able to focus in on a comparatively small number of strategic scenarios. And in a word, what this means is that, in contrast to Russian weapons systems, which work on paper, but have been witnessed to fail frequently on the battlefield in Ukraine due to corruption and half-baked develop

ment, with too few rubles chasing too many diverse development projects, Sweden’s weapons systems are much more focused and much more mature, and therefore actually work as intended. For these reasons, and more, despite its small size, Swedish weapons have become famous, and deadly. Sweden has a world-class air force, a world-class submarine fleet, highly advanced anti-tank missiles, perhaps the best anti-ship missiles in the world, some of the world’s most sophisticated arctic equipment, and mo

re. And this trend leads to a self-feeding domino effect, where the already easy-to-defend borders, which have allowed for this focused investment, have then become even easier for Sweden to defend as it grows in technological superiority. So let’s consider those borders now, and take a look at the herculean task Russia would need to accomplish to successfully invade and subdue Sweden. And to make it interesting, for the sake of demonstration, let’s pretend like Sweden doesn’t have any allies or

friends, and never becomes part of NATO, just to show how strongly Sweden’s capabilities stack up on their own - an important conversation topic to help other hesitant NATO members realize why Sweden is a significant asset, and not a liability. The reality is, an invasion of Sweden would be a fool's errand for anybody, since there are simply very few ways to approach Swedish territory over land, all of which are very easily defensible, and no real way to easily land a large invading force again

st Sweden via the sea. To their west and north, Sweden is bordered by Norway, and a large mountain range that would be difficult if not impossible for an invading army to pass through - not to mention that this army would also need to get through Norway, a NATO nation, first. To the east, Sweden is bordered by Finland, another NATO nation, with the Torne river covering almost the entire land border. And while this area is not mountainous, in order for Russia to approach it, they would first need

to push through Finland - something which would be no easy task, even if, again for the sake of demonstration, Finland wasn’t now part of NATO. The Soviet Union did try to invade Finland in 1939 and…it didn’t turn out very well for them. We’ll get more into why Finland itself poses such a challenge for Russia to invade, despite its own small size, in a future video. But for this video, we’re talking about Sweden. While Russia conducted this push, Sweden would almost certainly have the time it n

eeded to fortify its side of the Torne river and make the most of it as a natural barrier, the same way that Finland itself has had time to fortify its own border while Russia has been busy attacking Ukraine. Even if Russia managed to push past all of Finland, and break through Swedish fortifications to cross the Torne, their problems wouldn’t stop there. They would just be starting, as they would now reach a heavily forested area perfectly designed for guerilla warfare, where one of Sweden’s 30

0,000 armed hunters, intimately familiar with the terrain, along with any of Sweden’s more than 300,000 additional gun owners, could be hiding behind literally any rock or tree, making up a huge armed force, even if Sweden’s official military is rather small. Making matters worse, Sweden’s gun owners own a lot of guns - about 2 million in total, and those weapons could theoretically be used to arm others as well, essentially giving Sweden a potential civilian force ready and able to defend their

homeland that is larger than Russia’s entire military. And remember, guerilla warfare tactics are often the only thing that can defeat a superior invading force - the same types of tactics that allowed the United States to win its independence from the much larger British Empire, and the types of tactics that caused Russia to fail its invasions of both Chechnya and Afghanistan. To make matters worse, unlike Chechnya and Afghanistan, Sweden wouldn’t merely have the opportunity to participate in

guerilla warfare here - they would be able to participate in guerilla warfare backed by high-tech military capability and close air support. As Russia fought through this hellish situation, they would need to travel down one of only a small number of roads through the region into the heart of Sweden and towards the major Swedish cities. Off-road routes wouldn’t really be an option, as Russia would need to navigate through thick forest and around a seemingly endless supply of lakes, hills, and st

reams, something which would prove to be nearly impossible for heavy equipment like tanks or APCs, even under ideal conditions without the enemy trying to stunt your progress. Forced to take obvious routes, this would make Russia’s movements so predictable, the Swede’s could easily cluster strategically-placed mines, barriers, artillery, and snipers - with air cover from Sweden’s modern air force providing close air support the entire time. Tactics similar to those used in Ukraine could be reado

pted, with the Swedes setting up ambushes to neutralize the first and the last armored vehicles in an armored column, making it impossible for those trapped in the middle to escape, forcing a general panic and fast surrender. In the Kyiv front in Ukraine, these types of tactics nullified an entire Russian advance of fresh troops in less than 140 miles of wilderness roads - before Ukraine even had access to advanced western weapons. In Sweden, this situation would continue through hundreds of mil

es of wilderness and be faced with even more advanced weapons and tactics before Russia ever even reached a major Swedish city, and in contrast to Ukraine, the Russian troops would not by any means be fresh, having had to battle their way through Finland just to reach this point. The losses would be so devastating, that it seems almost impossible that they could even make it halfway, even if Russia committed the entirety of its armed forces to the task, which they couldn’t do, unless they wanted

to leave every one of their other borders completely undefended. For those reasons, and more, a land invasion into Sweden by Russia is essentially an impossibility. But, Russia does have a few other options - the most plausible one being landing by sea. At first, this might seem easier than the land approach, since Sweden has quite a long coastline of more than 2000 miles, or 3200 kilometers, theoretically opening up a huge array of possibilities for Russia to land and establish a beachhead. Bu

t things…aren’t quite that simple. And for several reasons, the coastal approach could be even more impossible for Russia than the land route. The first thing is that Sweden has…islands. Lots and lots of islands. Over 267,000 islands. In fact, if you zoom in on Google Maps, and carefully follow the Swedish coastline all the way around, you will find very few points along the entire Swedish coast that do not have a cluster of islands outside of them. This is a major problem for Russia. First, bec

ause the type of natural conditions that create so many islands don’t tend to create many nice large beaches that troop carriers could successfully land on. And second, because even in the spots where landings are possible, these islands can be seen as a sort of “second” Swedish coast that you have to navigate and fight through before you even get to the main coast. Having this many islands also makes the coastline treacherously difficult to navigate for anyone that is not familiar with local ch

arts and waters, and the need to navigate around islands also makes it almost impossible to concentrate enough ships in any given area to launch a large enough and fast enough invasion to actually establish a beachhead that could remain intact for more than about five minutes. And even if this beachhead managed to get established, Russia would still have to contend with the potentially massive Swedish guerilla force that we mentioned earlier as they attempted to push further inland. The islands

also provide plentiful opportunities for well-placed coastal mines, and many serve as a fruitful staging ground for anti-ship missiles, or even old-school mobile coastal artillery that can offer a strategically less high-tech solution if needed, which can’t be jammed or confused by countermeasures, assuming Russia was good at such things, which it isn’t, considering their entire Black Sea Fleet has basically been made irrelevant by a nation that doesn’t even have a navy. This is the strategic ad

vantage offered by Sweden’s small islands off the coast, but Sweden also has other large islands that offer different types of advantages as well. Most notable is Gotland Island, a place that has long been called “Sweden’s unsinkable aircraft carrier” which allows them a notable position to control air and naval traffic around the region. There are also other similar large islands or island collections in Sweden’s neck of the Baltic Sea, one of which is owned by Denmark, and one of which is auto

nomous. These could theoretically also be used by Sweden as “unsinkable aircraft carriers” if needed, since many Swedish aircraft have been designed to land and take off from regular highways, or even country roads, allowing them to use any infrastructure necessary, assuming they have the permission and need to do so. But for this video, let’s focus on Gotland. The island sits about 100 kilometers, or 60 miles off the coast of mainland Sweden and 160 kilometers, or 100 miles from the coast of La

tvia. This is a relatively remote, and stunningly beautiful place, a popular tourist destination that has sometimes been called the “Hawaii of the Baltic Sea”, 170 kilometers long, with a permanent population of just 61,000 people, about half of whom are concentrated within just one small city, which could easily be evacuated to Stockholm in the event of an invasion. If Russia was so foolish to ignore everything we have discussed up to this point, and was absolutely adamant about conducting a na

val invasion of Sweden, Russia would need to take Gotland first before being able to even approach the major Swedish cities - either by sea, or by air. They could theoretically ignore Gotland if they wanted their invading force to be picked off by the Swedish Air Force and anti-ship missiles long before they even came within sight of the main coastline, and then again on their way back for resupplies if they managed to make it there, but…you get the picture. Just as is the case for a land invasi

on of Sweden, Gotland means that a Russian naval invasion would also first have to contend with fighting through a very difficult, low-value target before they ever got close enough to a major civilian center to win any concessions from Sweden. This means that Russia would have to conduct not just one, but two successful large-scale amphibious landings in their campaign - one to take Gotland, and another almost impossible mission to land on mainland Sweden - with each being extremely risky opera

tions for Russia on their own. Could Russia accomplish this? Absolutely not. And if you think they could, you probably spend too much time watching this guy. Because of its geographical situation, one of Sweden’s primary military doctrines for many years has been to simply ensure that no enemy can ever land significant enough concentrations of troops to be a problem. And because of Sweden’s technological advantage, which we’ve already discussed, this is a very easy mission for them to achieve. T

o make it possible, Sweden has developed one of the most capable navies in the world. The aptly named HMS Gotland, for example, is a silent sub, more silent than a nuclear submarine, capable of running for several weeks underwater, and the only submarine to ever come close enough to take pictures of a US aircraft carrier while remaining completely undetected. Sweden has 3 submarines with this capability, and others as well, as just a small sampling of their naval power. And they might not need m

uch more than just that to completely repel a Russian invasion. That’s because, for its part, Russia’s Baltic Fleet actually has very few ships capable of landing troops, assuming they could even reach the shoreline in the first place - a situation made even worse due to the fact that several of their largest troop landers were redeployed to the Black Sea to prepare for their invasion of Ukraine. Currently, these ships are locked in the Black Sea due to Turkey’s closure of the Bosphorus Strait,

a theater where they have basically been made redundant due to Ukraine’s use of anti-ship missiles - many of which were manufactured by, you guessed it, Sweden. To nullify Russia’s military almost completely from their perspective, Sweden does not have to defeat Russia entirely. They simply need to sink the very few ships capable of landing troops, after which the job is almost completely done, since Russia will have no possibility of creating a strategic foothold. And Sweden doesn’t even need t

o sink all of them. They just need to sink enough to limit the capability into ineffectiveness. There are probably less than 20 ships in the entire Russian Baltic Fleet that are capable of landing troops, so with the combined efforts of the Swedish air force, the Swedish navy, and the anti-ship missiles being fired from the shore, plus other basic conventional weapons that could be used during an attempted landing, this is a relatively simple task. All of this is made even easier by the fact tha

t, if Russia tried to amass sufficient forces into the Baltic Fleet, Sweden would know well ahead of time due to modern satellites and drones, and would simply need to position their navy appropriately to completely nullify such an effort before it even started. This is something that is quite easily accomplished, since any ships repositioning themselves into the Baltic Sea must travel past very narrow chokepoints controlled by Sweden and Denmark, which could easily be blockaded if serious threa

ts were being made. So, if the land approach doesn’t work, and the naval approach doesn’t work, what options are left for Russia? Well, not many. They could try to land paratroopers en masse across Sweden with a large-scale air invasion. But this is basically just a modified version of the land invasion, with small, unorganized groups of paratroopers having to deal with a huge, very upset and very well-armed guerilla force as soon as their boots touched the ground, without heavy equipment or for

tified lines to fall back on. And that’s assuming they could even land, which most of them wouldn’t, since Sweden has some of the most sophisticated radar nets and air defense systems in existence. For these reasons, and more, there is just no way that Russia could feasibly conduct an invasion of Sweden without taking losses that are too much for even them to bear. Even the famous and dark Stalin phrase “quantity has a quality all its own” doesn’t apply to an invasion of an area like Sweden. Und

er this infamous Russian doctrine, Russia is able to win their battles against technologically superior or better fortified enemies simply because Russia has larger population numbers and the audacity to keep sending soldiers until the battle is won - with no care for human life, no matter the cost. This was a tactic that led Russia to victory in World War II, and is something we are seeing in live action in the war in Ukraine, which I’ve covered in other videos, like my analysis of Russia’s bat

tles for Bakhmut and Avdiivka. This is a disturbing strategy that admittedly can be effective - but even it has its limits. A numerical advantage works when you are fighting in wide open fields like those of Russia and Poland in World War II, or Ukraine in the modern day, where eventually large numbers can lead to encirclements and the capture of territory, even if only at the Pyrrhic cost of a 10 to 1 loss ratio. But when it comes to attacking a place like Sweden, simply throwing more men at th

e problem isn’t as likely to lead to a breakthrough. On the naval front, men aren’t going to be able to swim hundreds of miles across the Baltic Sea once you run out of ships to land them, no matter how willing Russian generals might be to try this strategy with Siberian conscripts. The same goes for landing troops via the air - men can’t magically grow wings and fly - something Russia should know very well, considering such a capability could help them solve their huge national problem of peopl

e accidentally falling out of windows. And by land, when you’re fighting in thick Swedish forests that are open season for guerilla warfare, and with land mines and high-tech air cover at every possible point of transit, huge army movements don’t work either. To get from tip to tip of Sweden via land, Russia would need to fight across a territory nearly as long as what they fought through in World War II, something which at the time cost them nearly 8 million Russian lives. And this time, their

approach would not include large swathes of open fields, but would instead mostly consist of dense forests and deadly bogs and marshes. And again, this is all just Sweden standing alone. In reality, they would probably also have a lot of international support, even if they weren’t a member of NATO, which they will probably officially be a part of within a few weeks of this video being posted. Sweden has nothing to worry about. By focusing on developing real strategic advantages, rather than main

taining vanity numbers of a large expensive military year after year, Sweden has developed capabilities that will ensure its national security for the foreseeable future. And these capabilities mean that Sweden is in no way shape or form a liability to NATO, but just another extremely powerful asset to the alliance. Sweden sets the example of a true defensive military force, just strong enough to very effectively deter an enemy force from being able to capture strategic objectives, but not stron

g enough to attack an enemy nation - because it never intends to. And in case you’ve swallowed a LOT of Russian propaganda, and you’ve been somehow convinced that a defensively-focused nation like Sweden joining a defensive alliance like NATO is somehow an aggressive action as Russia has claimed, I hope that helps clear things up. Like the rest of NATO, nobody is trying to take anything from Russia. They just want to be able to defend themselves from irrational aggression. And Russia needs to as

k themselves why all of the nations surrounding them have made this choice - even Sweden, ending 200 years of neutrality because of Russia’s recent actions. If you enjoyed this episode, you’ll enjoy The Icarus Project Patreon channel - a place where we share ad-free and sponsor-free versions of all of our new videos. Our patrons enjoy special benefits, like the ability to message us directly, recommend future video topics, and the ability to access some videos we had to remove from other platfor

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