A Russian shadow flits over Sweden’s election

The tight contest may not go as the populist-right Sweden Democrats hoped

Swedish politics is seldom thrilling. Yet in recent weeks the general election scheduled for September 13th has become as gripping as a Stieg Larsson mystery. The polls have been tightening relentlessly. Then, last week, the race was shaken by reports that an official in the anti-immigrant Sweden Democrats party has worrying links to Russia.

A woman adjusts ballots as early voting for general elections begins in Stockholm, Sweden, Wednesday, Aug. 26, 2026. ((Fredrik Sandberg/TT News Agency via AP))

For most of the past three years this election looked like a foregone conclusion. The Social Democrats, Sweden’s biggest party, seemed to have rediscovered their mojo, after losing in 2022 to a group of right-wing parties led by the centre-right Moderates and the populist-right Sweden Democrats (SD). After toughening their stance against migration, the Social Democrats saw their support rise to about 35% in polls, comfortably ahead of their rivals. The gang shootings and violent crime on which right-wing parties harped ceaselessly four years ago have since fallen sharply. Law and order, once the biggest concern for Swedes, has been supplanted by worries over health care, education and the economy—all issues where polls show the Social Democrats have an advantage.

Yet in the past few months the Social Democrats' lead has shrunk. Their hard line on immigration has pushed some progressive voters to defect to smaller parties to their left. They are now polling at around 28%, and are at risk of suffering their worst-ever election result. (In 2018 they got 28.3%.) Their chances of forming a centre-left coalition have narrowed further due to a bounce in support for the centre-right Liberals. That party, a member of the current government, had been expected to miss the 4% threshold and drop out of the Riksdag, Sweden’s parliament.

Should the Liberals squeeze in, their seats could allow the right to stay in power. This time, however, the government would have a more radical complexion. The current minority government, led by the Moderates, relies on a confidence-and-supply deal with the SD. They have influence over policy (especially on migration), but are not formally part of the coalition; other parties have long shunned the SD because of its neo-Nazi past. In any new coalition, the SD says it would insist on formal membership and on holding important ministries.

Now the Social Democrats have received an unexpected boost. On September 3rd Expo, an investigative publication (founded, as it happens, by the late Larsson), alleged that a highly placed SD official was linked to Russian influence operations. Polina Malaberg, a Russian-born naturalised Swede and longtime SD aide (currently on the Riksdag’s important Constitutional Committee), reportedly accompanied a party MP in 2017 on a trip to Moscow funded by the Russian government, and has since been involved in various networks in Sweden with links to Russian intelligence services. Ms Malaberg has declined to respond to requests for comment. The SD says she passed a security check when hired, and that it is investigating the allegations.

The report drew immediate denunciations of the SD from across the political spectrum. Ulf Kristersson, the prime minister, told Aftonbladet, a Swedish newspaper, that if the allegations are true then Ms Malaberg should be fired: “There is no room for pro-Russian narratives in Sweden. We are in a European war.” Peter Hultqvist, the defence spokesman for the Social Democrats, called it “an infiltration attempt” by a foreign power and a “crisis for Swedish security”.

That may be overstating the risks, reckons a senior security official. There is no suggestion Ms Malaberg ever had access to or passed on classified information, and it is not uncommon for ethnic Russians in the diaspora to air nationalist views on social media. Sweden’s Psychological Defence Agency, established in 2022 to counter foreign influence operations and disinformation, says Russia is the primary threat to the integrity of the election, but reckons that Sweden is not currently a priority target for Russia. The Kremlin would have little to gain: there is a broad consensus in support of Ukraine across all Sweden’s political parties, including the SD.

Jimmie Akesson, the SD’s leader (pictured, on balloon), has tried hard to distance the party from the scandal, insisting it has no space for “Putin’s friends”. Yet he may face some scepticism in convincing voters of that. Although he has worked hard to rid the party of neo-Nazis and pro-Russian extremists, cranks of both sorts regularly pop out of the woodwork. Support for Ukraine runs deep in Sweden, as does opposition to Russia: just 5% of Swedes said they view the country favourably, according to a poll by Pew. Any hint of Russian links could cost the SD enough votes to swing the outcome of a tight election. Sometimes influence operations exert influence in the wrong direction.