On Saturday, it has been half a year since Sweden's entry into the defense alliance NATO, and the young people who are now being called up for military service are the first cohort to do so in a NATO defense.
When we were called up, they started talking about the ongoing war and that the world view looks different now. A small wake-up-call, one can call it, that it's actually very real, says Emma Alm from Lund, who is doing her third week as a conscript in Karlskrona.
When Defense Minister Pål Jonson (The Moderate Party) and Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson (The Moderate Party) met her and other new conscripts, there were many references to conscription during Jonson's and Kristersson's time. Today's cohorts are better and above all more motivated, the ministers noted.
There is a serious intention behind it all. We know that we are being trained for ten months so that we will be prepared if war comes, says Alice Wandt after the ministerial meeting.
