ACCORDING to Associated Press, Sweden has for the first time publicly attributed a cyberattack on a heating plant in western Sweden last year to a pro-Russian group with links to Russia’s security and intelligence services. Sweden’s minister for civil defence, Carl-Oskar Bohlin, said the attack targeted the plant but failed, offering no further details.
He compared the incident with December attacks in Poland that hit combined heat and power plants supplying heat to hundreds of thousands of customers, noting that Poland later said hackers were directly linked to the Russian services. Bohlin described the Sweden and Poland cyberattacks as directed at systems controlling critical infrastructure with potentially serious consequences for society, and characterised Russia’s behaviour as risky and careless.
The attacks are among more than 150 incidents tracked by The Associated Press across Europe since Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, with officials saying the goal is to undermine support for Ukraine and sow fear. The Kremlin has previously denied carrying out such sabotage campaigns.