NORRTALJE, Sweden -- Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson on Sunday was on the campaign trail a week before Sweden's national election to tackle fears over gang violence and rising electricity bills.
Andersson traveled by bus to communities near Stockholm to try to reassure voters. The election on Sept. 11 comes amid a sense of rising insecurity, with a spate of shootings in Sweden making crime a key campaign issue.
Russia’s war against Ukraine led Sweden, along with Finland, to take the historic step of applying to join NATO. That step has reassured many, and is so uncontested it hasn't been an issue in the campaign before the election.
But Andersson said that Russia’s energy “warfare” against Europe, including a cutoff of gas through the Nord Stream 1 pipeline to Germany, has become an issue that voters keep raising with her as she campaigns for her left-wing Swedish Democratic party.
“Many people are concerned with their electricity bills given Putin’s warfare on energy,” the 55-year-old leader said in comments to The Associated Press after a visit at a senior community center in Norrtalje, a town to the north of Stockholm.
“I mean he has a military invasion in Ukraine, but he also has energy warfare against Europe, so people are very concerned with electricity bills but also with criminality and climate.”
Her government pledged Saturday to provide $23 billion in liquidity guarantees to electricity companies, a step that followed the cutoff to Nord Stream 1, and was meant to prevent a financial crisis.
Another concern for Andersson is the rising popularity of a populist far-right party with its historical roots in the Nazi movement, the Sweden Democrats.
The party, which has worked to mainstream its image, is closer to power than it has ever been, causing many Swedish voters to fear that it could end up with a key position of power in a right-wing coalition. The anti-migrant party has gained in popularity as the country has struggled to integrate large numbers of migrants. Critics fear its roots in the extreme far right make it a threat to the county's democratic foundations.
Polls show that a right-wing coalition including the Sweden Democrats has a chance at winning power, though the race is expected to be close.