Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson slammed Hungarian leader Viktor Orbán for spreading “outrageous lies” after Orbán said Sweden is on the brink of collapse because of rampant organized crime. “These are outrageous lies. Not surprising coming from the man who is dismantling the rule of law in his own country. Orbán is desperate ahead of the upcoming Hungarian election,” Kristersson wrote in a post on X. The social media row between the leaders began when Orbán posted a video in which he attacked the Swedish justice system. “”The Swedish government lectures us about the rule of law. Meanwhile, according to an article by Die Welt, criminal networks are exploiting Swedish children as killers, knowing the system won’t convict,” Orbán said on X. “A country once known for order and safety is now collapsing: over 280 underage girls arrested for murder, families living in fear. It’s heartbreaking. The Swedish people deserve better!” According to the article in Die Welt, 280 girls in Sweden between the ages of 15 and 17 were investigated last year for serious crimes such as murder. The Swedish Crime Prevention Council has different numbers, saying 68 women in that age bracket were suspected of murder and assault. Sweden is grappling with a crime wave involving teenagers being hired by gangs through social media, particularly Telegram, to carry out a range of crimes, from spying to vandalism and from bombings to murder. The Swedish government last week said it wants to lower the age of criminal responsibility for crimes such as murder from 15 to 13. Both Sweden and Hungary will hold elections next year — Sweden in September and Hungary in April. In Hungary, the center-right Respect and Freedom Party (Tisza), led by Orbán nemesis Péter Magyar, currently has a 7-point lead over the governing right-wing Fidesz, according to POLITICO’s Poll of Polls, seriously threatening Orbán’s decade-and-a-half of rule.

A top Swedish politician called domestic pro-Palestinian activists “barbarians” on Wednesday after they harassed a fellow cabinet member in Stockholm. “Activists are now behaving like barbarians when they restrict other people’s freedom of speech,” Swedish Energy Minister Ebba Busch wrote on X. “In Sweden, we have a long tradition of freedom of speech and democracy. This is now under threat.” On Monday night, several pro-Palestinian activists harassed Civil Defense Minister Carl-Oskar Bohlin as he was returning home from a meeting. In a video Bohlin filmed himself, the activists can be seen following him, shouting “Shame on you!” Bohlin then returned to the parliament building to avoid leading the activists to his home. Speaking on the Morgonstudion program on the SVT public broadcaster, the morning after the incident, Bohlin said the behavior of the protesters was “not normal” and warned: “What is the next boundary this group of people will cross?” He also called for the country’s authorities to stand “shoulder to shoulder with the Jewish minority.” Busch, who leads the Christian Democrats, a junior partner in the country’s ruling coalition, said she expects the police to take action against those “who do not respect the rules of democracy,” and proposed stronger legislation to protect politicians. Svenska Dagbladet reported that police are investigating the incident. Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson wrote on X that he expects “all parties to distance themselves from the mob tactics,” adding a warning for Palestinian activists in Stockholm: “You are welcome to express your opinion on the Middle East. But immediately stop threatening Swedish politicians!”

Top Swedish bodyguards are facing further embarrassment after media revealed their fitness tracking data inadvertently exposed the locations of the country’s most powerful figures. Swedish security service members, who have already been accused of revealing details about the Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson through a workout app, also let slip the location of the king and queen’s secret vacations, including a private island in the Seychelles and the mountain village of Storlien in northern Sweden. Data about the royal family’s latest trip to a luxury villa on the French Riviera, which took place in June, is so detailed that they could have been mapped in real-time, Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter reported. Several hotels contacted by the newspaper confirmed that the Swedish royal couple stayed with them, but pointed out they were not allowed to say anything. The Swedish bodyguards uploaded more than 1,400 workouts to the fitness app Strava from 2015 through July 2025. Approximately 70 of the files concerned the Swedish royal family — King Carl XVI Gustaf and Queen Silvia — revealing classified information that could have put senior figures at risk. Information uploaded to Strava was also linked to the former prime ministers Magdalena Andersson and Stefan Löfven, former foreign minister Ann Linde and Jimmie Åkesson, leader of the government-supporting right-wing populist Sweden Democrats party.

Swedish security service members who shared details of their running and cycling routes on fitness app Strava have been accused of revealing details of the prime minister’s location, including his private address. According to Swedish daily Dagens Nyheter, on at least 35 occasions bodyguards uploaded their workouts to the training app and revealed information linked to Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson, including where he goes running, details of overnight trips abroad, and the location of his private home, which is supposed to be secret. Information uploaded to Strava was also linked to the Swedish royal family, former Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson, and Jimmie Åkesson, leader of the government-supporting Sweden Democrats party. According to Dagens Nyheter, a bodyguard posted details of a run in Bodø in Norway while Kristersson was meeting with his Norwegian and Finnish counterparts, Jonas Gahr Støre and Alexander Stubb. Kristersson later posted a picture on social media of the three leaders running together.

A dispute over Gaza appears to have sparked a fight in the European Parliament on Wednesday, with a left-wing staffer and a center-right MEP accusing each other of aggression — and the Parliament’s initial assessment siding with the MEP’s version of events. A staffer from left-wing Swedish party Vänsterpartiet on Wednesday accused a Swedish European People’s Party lawmaker, Alice Teodorescu, of physically attacking them. But Teodorescu’s office disputed the story, alleging the Vänsterpartiet aide was the instigator. Teodorescu’s office said the MEP had been on her way to a meeting before the Parliament’s afternoon debate on the Gaza conflict when the Vänsterpartiet staffer started filming her without her consent, saying they would publish the footage on social media to “tell the world what a terrible person” Teodorescu is. (Teodorescu is known for her staunchly pro-Israel stance.) The MEP then turned her own phone on the Vänsterpartiet staffer, who attempted to grab the device, leading to a physical scuffle. “Several people in the Parliament saw it happening; it was related to Palestine-Israel tensions, because the MEP is very pro-Israel,” said a Parliament official, who was granted anonymity to speak freely. The atmosphere in the Parliament on Wednesday was tense as lawmakers debated Israel’s ongoing invasion of the Gaza Strip during a plenary session. A spokesperson for the Parliament said the violent incident, which was caught on surveillance cameras, was “being investigated as a matter of priority,” and “the initial assessment confirms the MEP’s version of events.” The spokesperson added that the Parliament was providing assistance to Teodorescu, whose office said she had requested additional security. Earlier, Vänsterpartiet chief of staff Marie Antman alleged to Swedish news agency TT that the staffer had come into her office “in a state of shock and showed marks that the person had received on his arm. Then it turned out that a Swedish parliamentarian had simply physically attacked my colleague.” The secretary-general of Teodorescu’s party, the Swedish Christian Democrats, said on social media that the MEP is currently “in shock of the event, that such a thing can happen in a democratic institution.”

Sweden’s new National Security Adviser Tobias Thyberg resigned less than 24 hours after his appointment on Thursday, following the emergence of “sensitive” photos linked to an old dating app profile. “Shortly after the government’s decision yesterday to appoint Tobias Thyberg, entirely new personal information about him emerged that was previously unknown to the Government Offices,” Johan Stuart, State Secretary to Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson, told POLITICO in a statement. Stuart explained that Thyberg admitted Thursday evening to failing to disclose information during the recruitment process that he was obligated to share. “This is, of course, serious. He has therefore decided himself not to take the position. A new recruitment process will now begin,” Stuart said, adding that Deputy National Security Adviser Annika Brändström will serve in the role temporarily. Earlier on Friday, the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter (DN) reported that Thyberg resigned after the publication had asked him about photos described as “sensitive.” “These are old pictures from an account I previously had on the dating site Grindr. I should have informed [the government] about this but I didn’t. I have therefore said I do not intend to take up the position as national security adviser,” Thyberg told DN. Thyberg served as Sweden’s ambassador to Afghanistan from 2017 to 2019, ambassador to Ukraine until 2023, and most recently headed the foreign ministry’s unit for Eastern Europe and Central Asia. Sweden has had only two national security advisers to date, both of whom have left the post under unusual circumstances. Thyberg’s predecessor Henrik Landerholm stepped down in January after a prosecutor launched an investigation into his mishandling of highly classified documents at a conference center in 2023.

The Turkish authorities confirmed on Sunday the arrest of Swedish journalist  Joakim Medin, according to Agence France-Presse. “Wanted for the crimes of ‘belonging to an armed terrorist organization’ and ‘insulting the president,’ the individual was arrested on arrival at Istanbul airport on March 27 and incarcerated,” the Turkish government’s center for combating misinformation reportedly said. The journalist’s incarceration comes in the context of huge protests in Istanbul against the arrest of opposition leader Ekrem İmamoğlu. The Istanbul mayor — who is widely viewed as the main challenger to President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan — was arrested last week on corruption charges. Medin’s arrest also comes on the heels of the deportation of Mark Lowen, a correspondent for the BBC, as well as the imprisonment of a dozen Turkish journalists covering the demonstrations. However, the Turkish government said the warrant targeting the Swedish reporter has “nothing to do with journalistic activities.” It is about Medin’s participation in a demonstration by the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in Stockholm back in 2023. The PKK is labeled a terrorist group in a lot of European countries, including Sweden. The presence of PKK members in Sweden is at the heart of the complicated relationship between Turkey and the Nordic country. It’s one of the reasons why Turkey was one of the last countries to approve Stockholm’s bid to join NATO last year — and Ankara eventually extracted concessions including extraditions of Turkish citizens residing in Sweden. Erik Larsson, who heads Reporters Without Borders in Sweden, criticized Medin’s arrest. “This is an assault not only on Joakim Medin, but on all of us. We have the right to know what is going on in Turkey,” he said.

Donald Trump’s statement that Kyiv “started” the war Russia launched on Ukraine has left Europeans dumbstruck, with one British government aide simply responding, “Jesus.” On Tuesday night, the U.S. president claimed that Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy is a poor negotiator, saying it’s his fault that his country — which Russia has been attacking for a decade now, including a full-scale invasion in 2022 — is being left out of negotiations over a potential peace deal.  “Well, you’ve been there for three years. You should have ended it — three years. You should have never been there. You should have never started it. You should have made a deal,” Trump said.  The U.S. president also reiterated his interest in forcing Ukraine to hold elections as part of a deal to end the war. But this would be in Russia’s best interest, Sweden’s Foreign Minister Maria Malmer Stenergard said Wednesday. “Putin doesn’t want elections in Ukraine because he cherishes Ukrainian democracy. He wants elections to weaken Ukraine under the current state of emergency. We must not fall into that trap,” Stenergard told Swedish outlet Aftonbladet on Wednesday. German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius also lashed out at the U.S. for barring Ukraine from joining NATO. “The Americans made a mistake,” Pistorius said in an interview with public broadcaster Deutschlandfunk, adding that concessions like that weaken negotiating positions against Russia. “The Americans seem to take the Europeans less seriously when it comes to geopolitical issues.” But in the United Kingdom, former Prime Minister Boris Johnson urged European leaders not to take Trump’s blaming of the Ukrainians for their country being invaded too literally. “Trump’s statements are not intended to be historically accurate but to shock Europeans into action,” he said. After U.S. and Russian war negotiators met in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday, European and other world leaders are holding a second emergency summit in Paris on Wednesday as pressure grows to forge a cohesive response to Trump’s divisive plan to end the war in Ukraine. Elena Giordano, Noah Keate and Stefan Boscia contributed to this report.

Sweden will rush through legislation allowing police to wiretap children under 15 after a recent spate of bombings ordered by criminal gangs recruiting teens, Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson announced Thursday. “We are pushing the legislation to enter into force in the fall of 2025 … This is important to get at those who often sit far away and order crimes of children in Sweden,” said Kristersson at a press conference after an extraordinary meeting with the country’s council against organized crime. The original idea was to have the law ready by summer 2026. Sweden is grappling with a crime wave involving teenagers who are being hired by gangs through social media, particularly Telegram, to do everything from spying and committing vandalism to violent acts, bombings and murder. According to the police, many of the teen contract killers are very young and are being hired from abroad. Based on the police data, around 600 criminals targeting Sweden live abroad. “We see 12-, 13- and 14-year-olds carry out horrific violent assignments as if they were extra jobs. The assignments are communicated completely openly on digital marketplaces. Crime is often controlled by gang criminals who are abroad,” said Sweden’s national police chief Petra Lundh. Around 30 bombings have taken place in Sweden this January so far, with five blasts in Stockholm alone over the last 24 hours. “During the month of January, there has been an average of one blast per day. That trend must of course be broken,” Swedish Justice Minister Gunnar Strömmer said Wednesday. Prime Minister Kristersson said that Sweden is working with countries like Turkey, Iran, Iraq and the United Arab Emirates to get gang leaders based there extradited. Sweden is also trying to crack down on the tech platforms in order to force them to stop recruitment by gangs, and has asked the European Union to step in.

The anti-Islam activist who sparked outrage and riots in Muslim-majority countries over his repeated Quran burnings in 2023 in Sweden, was killed on late Wednesday evening at his home, local media reported. Salwan Momika was set to stand trial over hate incitement charges on Thursday. A judge at the Stockholm District Court, Göran Lundahl, confirmed that the verdict was postponed to Feb. 3 because one of the defendants had died. “I am next,” wrote another defendant, Salwan Najem, in a post on X. The prosecutor assigned to the case said that five people were arrested in relation to the killing. Swedish outlet SVT reported that the murder had taken place while Momika was livestreaming on TikTok, but POLITICO could not independently verify this and the police did not confirm this version of events. Momika, an Iraqi refugee who arrived in Sweden in 2021, angered thousands of Muslims in Sweden and abroad during his numerous anti-Islam protests where he burned the Quran. Momika argued that his protests targeted the religion of Islam, not Muslim people. Swedish police had allowed his demonstrations, citing his right to freedom of speech. Burning the Quran is extremely offensive to Muslims, as the holy book is considered the word of God.  A spate of Quran-burnings were held between 2022 and 2024 by multiple anti-Islam activists across Denmark and Sweden, briefly jeopardizing the latter’s bid to join NATO. Sweden finally joined the defense alliance last January.