Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Joakim Paasikivi has become one of Sweden’s best-known defense experts and participated extensively in the media.
He has spent most of his professional life in the Armed Forces, including serving abroad and working in the military intelligence and security service, Must.
Today, he is a teacher of military strategy at the Swedish Defense Academy in Stockholm and discusses everything from combat technology to world trade and nuclear weapons.
But the military career began with conscription in the neighboring country of Finland.
Difference in setting
Already during his military service, he noticed a difference in the attitude to defense in Sweden and Finland. Among comrades in the neighboring country, it was not only the life they lived that was talked about. There were also stories about older relatives’ experiences in the Second World War.
– My grandfather died at the front in 1942. There was an immediacy to reality there, says Paasikivi.
Finland maintained its defense
Unlike Sweden, Finland has maintained a large military and civilian defense after the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. Annually, 21,000 conscripts complete their training in Finland.
In Sweden, approximately 6,000 conscripts will do their military service in 2024.
But the war in Ukraine has resulted in defense becoming a more prioritized issue. Until 2030, the idea is to increase the number of conscripts per year to 10,000. A figure that is still a bit short of the 50,000 who moved in annually during the Cold War.
See the whole Do you want to defend your country? on SVT Play.