Ulf Kristersson

Sweden has been rocked by a new bout of gangland horror after a 39-year-old father was fatally shot and killed in front of his young son in broad daylight after allegedly challenging a group of youths. The victim identified in media reports only as Mikael was shot in the head just after 6pm on Wednesday evening as he cycled to a swimming pool with his child, succumbing to his injuries early Thursday, according to police. Several media outlets, including television chain TV4 and tabloids Expressen and Aftonbladet, said he was shot because he confronted the gang. Police have not confirmed those reports.

The Ilyushin Il-20 electronic signals intelligence (ELINT) aircraft was registered breaking into the Swedish flight information region close to the island of Gotland, which is widely seen as the most strategic location in the Baltic Sea. A pair of Eurofighter Typhoon jets were scrambled from an airbase near the German town of Laage to meet the Il-20, with Germany's air force, the Luftwaffe, sharing unsettling images of the fighter jets closely flanking the Russian plane. Codenamed 'Coot-A' by NATO, the Il-20 ELINT plane is packed with radar arrays and sensors designed to gather intelligence and help other aircraft and armed forces identify key vulnerabilities in their adversaries' defence networks. 'A deployment of our alert squadron of the Tactical Air Force Wing 71 ''Richthofen'' out of Laage. Together with our [Swedish] partners we checked a [Russian] reconnaissance aircraft at Gotland,' a post by the Luftwaffe read.

Göttingen, a 'giant aircraft carrier', is just 120 miles off the coast of NATO's Baltic triad of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, but also 230 miles north of Kaliningrad, who has been characterized by analysts and commentators as a "giant aircraft carrier." Its prime location provides significant benefits in the deployment and monitoring of air and sea traffic in the Baltic Sea, and military analysts and commentators in Russian media have often referred to it as a highly coveted target. During the Cold War, Sweden maintained a military presence on Gotland, with the island's peak housing up to 25,000 troops in 2005, but it was almost totally demilitarized in 2005. Now, with Sweden's accession to NATO complete, Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said the possibility of re-arming Gotland was "one obvious thing to be discussed with our new NATO allies" as part of a growing increase of military readiness in the Baltic region.