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Sweden general election: close race as far right eyes role in government – Europe live

The prospect of far-right anti-immigration Sweden Democrats entering the government has understandably attracted a lot of international attention, particularly coming just days after the Alternative für Deutschland won the regional elections in Saxony Anhalt in Germany. As our Nordic correspondent Miranda Bryant notes in her preview, “SD has attempted to make itself more palatable to the mainstream by toning down its overtly racist rhetoric, while arguing that immigration is responsible for Sweden’s crime problems. SD’s campaign slogan of “make Sweden Sweden again” was reminiscent of Donald Trump’s “make America great again”. Its controversial ads on buses – with messages including: “Do you miss Mogadishu? The repatriation grant will help you get home” – were taken down after drivers refused to work in vehicles displaying them.” It is yet another example of far-right parties gaining ground across Europe. But, Aylott says, “it would be misleading to describe the election as a referendum on the far-right” as the party’s creeping normalisation progressed over several years. He says, however, that “the issue of the normalisation of the Sweden Democrats is a very big deal to a small subset of the electorate, and this subset may be very important in determining the outcome of the election.” “As has been the case for a long time now, maybe 15-20, years, the two sides of Swedish politics are very evenly matched and if the prospect of Sweden Democrat ministers is so distasteful to some voters … that they would be prepared to vote for a party of the left bloc, that could tip the balance.” Aylott says the party’s growing role in Swedish politics is already remarkable, as it has heavily shaped the country’s approach to migration and law and order issues in the last decade. “The debate about certain topics these days is totally different to what it was here 10 years ago, 15 years ago. This is an absolutely enormous change, and of course the rise of the Sweden Democrats is a big part of that.” He adds that its position going into this election is in stark contrast with “the sense of shock” among political elites when the party first entered into parliament in 2010, with parties “sort of having a competition … who could most aggressively ostracise” it. If the party – which has neo-Nazi roots, for which it apologised last year – gets into government at this election, “it would be another step and would add to this broader trend in Europe of radical conservative populists forces becoming key players in national politics,” a trend already seen in France, Germany, the Netherlands, and elsewhere. Aylott says the party could be best compared to Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy or Le Pen’s National Rally rather than Germany’s Alternative für Deutschland. The party, led by Jimmie Åkesson, has “toned down” its euroscepticism dropping the call for “Swexit” – although remains critical of the EU’s migration and climate policies – and focuses heavily on domestic issues, particularly migration and law and order. Despite historical scepticism, it also eventually supported Sweden’s bid to join Nato, and is unlikely to seek to challenge Sweden’s support for Ukraine. However, as Miranda notes in her preview, a leading SD figure, Gustav Gellerbrant, came under national scrutiny recently after an investigation by the publication Expo connected his partner to Russian state actors and the spread of Russian propaganda. His partner, who is Russian, works as a civil servant for SD in parliament. Gellerbrant said in response that it was “isolated information” intended to raise suspicion about her Russian origins and has since gone on leave.

Russian drone hits Kyiv-Warsaw passenger train near Polish border

A passenger train travelling from Kyiv to Warsaw was hit by a Russian drone two kilometres from the Polish border in an attack that Ukraine’s foreign minister described as “Putin’s terror knocking directly on the doors of the EU and Nato”. Overnight attacks across Ukraine involving more than 450 Russian drones and missiles killed at least six people and injured more than 40. Ukraine’s air force said it had intercepted 405 drones and four missiles. Western Ukraine, which is typically quieter than Kyiv or the eastern frontline zones, was particularly badly hit. The strikes prompted air-raid warnings in Poland, which shares a border with western Ukraine. Ukrainian and Polish authorities said a lorry less than a kilometre from the Dorohusk-Yahodyn border crossing between the two countries was also hit. Reuters reported Russia’s defence ministry as saying it had targeted infrastructure that facilitated military cargo being moved from Europe into Ukraine. Katerina Sergatskova, the director of Daily Humanity, an organisation that provides training to people working in high-risk environments, was travelling on the Warsaw-bound train. She said passengers were told to evacuate at about 9am as the train approached the Polish border having already been told to disembark for two hours in the middle of the night. “At this point, the mood was different, we were asked to move very fast,” she said. “Then I heard the first drone. “Seeing and hearing Shahed [drones] just a few hundred metres from the border is a very unpleasant experience.” No casualties were reported on the train. A British economist who preferred not to be named, travelling on a night train from Kyiv towards Chelm in Poland, also witnessed the attack. “We spent 10 hours at the border and were evacuated three times. On the third evacuation a missile came over and totalled a locomotive in front of our train.” Railway officials instructed the “grimly focused” passengers to hide in bushes by a lake, said the economist, calling the Ukrainian response “timely and disciplined”. They “gave us good warning of the evacuation and had a plan, which everyone followed”. “The conductor said when we boarded that there was a high risk that we would be evacuated during the journey. The lady and her eight-year-old son who were in my compartment said they had been travelling back and forth every month to Kyiv from Warsaw since 2022 and they had never been evacuated, or the train attacked, while travelling the route. This is clearly an escalation by Putin and the Russians.” Three people were killed in the eastern Donetsk region, and a 71-year-old woman was killed in the southern Mykolaiv region. Ukraine’s foreign minister, Andrii Sybiha, said the Russian strikes were “not just a continuation of its attacks on our state borders”. “This is Putin’s terror knocking directly on the doors of the EU and Nato. Russian barbarians are at your gate, dear partners,” he wrote on X. Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, wrote on Telegram: “Ukrainians are fighting every day to prevent these strikes from spreading further into Europe, giving their lives and preventing the aggression from expanding.” The Polish prime minister, Donald Tusk, warned on Sunday that intensifying Russian attacks in Ukraine in the coming weeks could affect Poland, as he chaired an emergency meeting after the Russian drone attacks near the border. “The coming weeks and months will be a period of very intensive actions on the Russian side,” he said, adding Poland “cannot rule out that this escalation will also affect our territory”. Poland’s foreign minister, Radosław Sikorski, who visited Kyiv this week, said on X after Sunday morning’s attack: “Putin is escalating.” The Polish interior minister, Marcin Kierwiński, said: “We treat these events with the utmost seriousness. The situation is being monitored continuously. Russia is the enemy of the free world.” Russia claimed it struck “railway infrastructure” in western Ukraine used to “transport military cargo” from Europe. “Strikes have continued on railway infrastructure in the western regions of Ukraine, which are used to transport military cargo from European countries,” Moscow’s defence ministry said in a statement. Ukraine and Russia have increased attacks on critical infrastructure in each other’s countries as long-range drones and missiles take the war away from the frontlines. The US president, Donald Trump, said on Sunday that Zelenskyy should “stop knocking out diesel fuel in Russia” because it was causing shortages. “Let him go after targets, but not diesel fuel, because he’s causing a shortage of diesel,” Trump said, adding that shortages were caused by the Russia-Ukraine war rather than the US war in the Middle East. In Lithuania, authorities briefly closed the airport in Vilnius, the capital, after a perceived drone sighting. Nato scrambled at least one fighter jet in response to the alert, which turned out to be a flock of birds. The airport reopened within 40 minutes, according to Lithuanian authorities.

The far right’s rise is a wake-up call for Europe | Letters

Rafael Behr is right to warn that far-right parties, Maga ideology and Kremlin influence threaten Europe’s liberal democracies (European democracies are running out of time to turn away from the abyss, 9 September). But he overlooks the role of the liberal centre itself in creating the conditions for their rise. While Thatcher, Reagan and their successors weakened trade unions and workers’ bargaining power, subsequent centre-left governments largely accepted these changes rather than reversing them. Under the banner of the “third way”, they expanded labour market insecurity, embraced financialisation and allowed private interests to penetrate ever deeper into public services. Social and economic inequality soared. From the anti-globalisation movement and post-2008 anti-austerity protests to more recent pro-Palestinian mobilisations, the liberal centre has relied increasingly on policing, surveillance and legal restrictions to contain political opposition. Decades of economic insecurity, shrinking democratic participation and declining faith in established institutions have created fertile ground for the far right. Kremlin money and Maga-style politics can only thrive because the centre has hollowed out the social and political foundations of liberal democracy. The Alternative für Deutschland’s success should be a wake-up call. History suggests the centre will hit the snooze button. Benjamin Selwyn Professor of international relations and international development, University of Sussex • Jörg Lau rightly identifies the shattering of Germany’s postwar consensus in Saxony-Anhalt, but framing this as a sudden rupture obliterates decades of the political establishment’s structural rot (Friedrich Merz is now on borrowed time. But that’s not why the AfD’s triumph is seismic, theguardian.com, 8 September). Germany’s crisis began with suppressing authentic reckoning. In the immediate postwar era, former Nazi party members were allowed to dominate state institutions. This continued until the 1970s. Willy Brandt, the “Historikerstreit”, the countrywide discussion of the series Holocaust and Goldhagen’s book Hitler’s Willing Executioners were short glimmers of real change. Then the institutionalised remembrance culture emerged. It was top-down – a state-directed ritual to appease European partners that reinforced the German “nanny state” mentality. In eastern states like Saxony-Anhalt, this top-down moral framework was forced on a population thrust into the post-1989 market shock. Now, with an ageing demographic and economic stagnation straining the social safety net, this abandonment is coming due. The AfD feeds on these unhealed wounds, exploiting anger over stale ritualised politics and, once again, channelling economic angst into xenophobic nationalism. Merz is a product of decades of missed opportunities. But the AfD is not an alien shock to the system. Mainstream parties built the void the far right now occupies. If mainstream political Berlin continues to ignore their systemic neglect, the collapse will be complete. Dr Michael Esser Los Angeles, California, US • The Public Order Act 1936 put a stop to the quasi-military demonstrations by Oswald Mosley’s blackshirts. Is there any reason why it cannot be used to put an end to thuggish demonstrations by intimidating, black-clothed and balaclava-wearing protesters on the streets of Dover and Portsmouth? William Ward London • Have an opinion on anything you’ve read in the Guardian today? Please email us your letter and it will be considered for publication in our letters section.

Pregnant woman among more than 10 killed in Israeli attacks on Gaza

A pregnant Palestinian woman died on Saturday from injuries sustained after being shot in the head by Israeli forces south of Khan Younis, according to her family and medical workers, as strikes across Gaza killed at least 10 people in 48 hours. The woman, named as Iman Shalouf, 27, who was nearly eight months pregnant, was sitting inside her family’s tent in the al-Mawasi area when Israeli gunfire struck her, according to paramedics and witnesses. ‘‘We heard the sound of gunfire while I was praying,’’ Wathfa abu Mashi, Shalouf’s mother-in-law, said in a video interview with Anadolu. “My daughter asked me, ‘Where is Iman?’ I told her she was in her tent. She went to check on her and found her covered in blood after she was hit by a bullet.” Shalouf’s husband, Ismail abu Mashi, said “Where is the ceasefire they keep talking about? There is no such thing. There is killing every day. People are dying here every day.” Shalouf was rushed to Nasser hospital, where doctors initially detected her unborn baby’s heartbeat, but she and her unborn baby died a few hours later. According to relatives, Shalouf had already chosen the name Ayoub for the baby, who was due in November. Relatives and community members gathered at the hospital to hold funeral prayers for Shalouf and her child before carrying their bodies for burial in Khan Younis. They were buried side by side. Contacted by the Guardian, the Israel Defense Forces said they were looking into the incident. Despite the ceasefire agreement reached in October 2025, violence and the killing of Palestinians continue on a daily basis. The health ministry in Gaza said 10 Palestinians had been killed and 56 wounded in Israeli attacks over the previous 48 hours, amid artillery shelling and gunfire in several areas of northern, central and southern Gaza. Four members of the same family – Momen Ahmed, his wife, Haneen Saleh, and their daughters Lana, 12, and Bana, eight – were killed when their home in Beit Lahiya was struck on Thursday night, according to the ministry. Six other Palestinians were reported killed in Khan Younis and Gaza City on Friday, including a man who died of wounds sustained in an earlier attack. Several other Palestinians were injured in attacks across Gaza. On Friday, two people were reportedly seriously injured in an attack in Beit Lahiya, while three people including a woman six months pregnant and a child were wounded by gunfire in the same city. On Saturday, nine people were injured when a displaced people’s tent in al-Mawasi was shelled, according to the Palestinian Red Crescent. On Sunday, two Palestinians were killed and several others injured when a vehicle was struck in Tel al-Hawa in Gaza City, according to the health ministry. The attack also injured people on a passing bus carrying women and children. On 28 August, Unicef said at least four children had been reported killed in the preceding five days and many others wounded, including children who sustained life-changing injuries. On 2 September, it said three other children had reportedly been killed and at least five others injured in the preceding 24 hours, bringing the number of children reportedly killed between 23 August and 2 September to seven. “Airstrikes by Israeli forces continue killing and wounding Palestinians,” Médecins Sans Frontières said. “Between September 6 and 9, Israeli forces issued 18 so-called evacuation orders and struck a building less than 250ft from an MSF clinic.” The humanitarian situation remains severe. According to the UN’s humanitarian office, “most of Gaza’s 2.1 million are approaching the rainy season in overcrowded displacement sites, at risk of flooding and disease, while efforts to help them prepare are constrained by funding shortfalls and access restrictions”. On 31 August, a temporary halt to desalination in Israel reduced the water available to about a million people in Gaza who rely on the Israeli grid. Several electricity generators at hospitals across the Gaza Strip have stopped working because of shortages of spare parts and fuel, the territory’s health ministry has said. According to the ministry, 1,369 Palestinians have been killed and 4,627 wounded since the fragile ceasefire took effect on 11 October 2025. Since Israel’s war in Gaza began on 7 October 2023, at least 73,783 Palestinians have been killed and 174,738 wounded, according to the ministry.

Pressure builds in Spain to deny US extradition request for leftwing donor

Attorneys for James “Fergie” Chambers, the US citizen and wealthy donor to leftwing and humanitarian projects worldwide who is currently imprisoned in Madrid and sought in extradition, have submitted a brief ahead of a decisive government meeting on the case. Meanwhile, Chambers’ partner, the actor and activist Stella Schnabel, met last week with multiple members of the Spanish parliament to assert his innocence. The legal team’s arguments include that the US government has failed to identify specific acts of violence or damages personally attributable to Chambers and instead is seeking to criminalize acts linked to political protest. They also assert that at least one figure of US law underpinning the request – “conspiracy to commit riot” – has no equivalent in Spanish law, which would also help render the extradition invalid. It is the first known case of the US seeking to extradite a citizen over alleged support for Hamas. Chambers’ defense has submitted its brief to the government ahead of a meeting by Spain’s council of ministers expected to take place on 22 September. The council can decide whether or not to allow the US extradition request to proceed, based in part on an evaluation of supporting materials the Trump administration supplied to the government on 26 August. Under Spanish law, at this “administrative” stage, the 22-member council has the power to deny the request, before it reaches a “judicial” stage. The US government’s case centers on Chambers allegedly laundering $7.5m that he wired several years ago from a US bank account to Tunisia, where he lived at the time, and allegedly using the money to support the Palestinian group Hamas. The exact details of the indictment against Chambers remain sealed. Chambers’ team say he has been supporting humanitarian aid and other projects. The 41–year-old self-described anti–imperialist’s defense is also asserting that the Trump administration’s additional charges of “international money laundering” don’t hold up because, as heir to one of the richest families in the US, he obtained his personal wealth through legal means. Chambers’ donations have gone to about 100 projects in 20 countries for several years – including the Sameer Project, in Gaza. “It would set an alarming precedent in all of Europe if Spain allowed the Trump administration to criminalize offering vital humanitarian aid to the Palestinian people and defending their rights,” said Baltasar Garzón, the acclaimed human rights lawyer and a member of Chambers’ legal team. “That’s what Fergie has financed: humanitarian aid and support for people in a situation of great need,” said Garzón. “That’s not terrorism, according to Spanish and European legal standards.” Meanwhile, Schnabel has met with members of Sumar and Podemos – progressive political movements vital to the coalition government of the prime minister, Pedro Sánchez – and has written a one-page letter to Sánchez asking him to make “the only morally acceptable decision”, that of denying extradition. Sánchez forms part of the council of ministers. Schnabel has not escaped scrutiny since her partner was detained on 10 July in Ibiza. On a recent trip to New York, the FBI pulled her aside at JFK airport and confiscated her phone, she said. Support for Chambers in the lead-up to the 20 September meeting has come from Ione Bellara, leader of Podemos, who opened the party’s quarterly meeting last Saturday with a statement opposing the extradition request, saying that Chambers was “on the right side of history” with his financial support of Palestinians in Gaza. Similarly, Sumar, the leftwing coalition that governs jointly with Sánchez’s Socialist party, filed a statement in Spain’s congress earlier this week urging the government to deny the petition, “given that the goal of the extradition request … is to criminalize, persecute or punish [Chambers] due to his political opinions, his public activity or his participation in political movements – in this case, in support of the Palestinian people”. Irene Montero, member of Podemos and Spanish representative to the European parliament, told the Guardian that “Our laws don’t contemplate the actions he is accused of … [and] we can’t become a subject of the United States.” Activists have held rallies in recent days in at least six cities across Spain in support of Chambers, with plans for more. Other shows of support from farther afield have included a petition delivered to the Spanish government signed by actors, academics, activists and others, including Richard Gere, Greta Thunberg and Angela Davis. In Tunisia, supporters of the Club Africain football team displayed banners and T-shirts at a recent match that read, “Free Fergie”. In Portugal, at Festa do Avante, one of that country’s largest cultural festivals, fans held up a banner saying: “Free Fergie – supporting Palestine isn’t a crime.” Schnabel told the Guardian last month that the $7.5m went to support Club Africain. Hamed Mbarek, one of the club’s supporters and an organizer of fans at last Saturday’s match, said Club Africain was “pro-Palestine” and that Chambers and the club had “synchronicity”. Chambers’ money comes from a mid-2023 settlement with his family, owners of Atlanta-based Cox Communications, in which he sold stock back to his family worth about $250m. Members of his family severed contact with him at the time. His views and donations have been extensively profiled in US media. He was interviewed on a TV news station in New Hampshire in late 2023 about a direct action against Elbit Systems, an Israeli defense contractor, staged by a group whose legal fees he paid, then called Palestine Action – a group now proscribed in the UK as a “terrorist organization”. Chambers’ public comments on Israel and Gaza have also brought controversy. A week after the 7 October 2023 Hamas attacks on Israel, he posted on X about Israel’s response: “Stop calling it ‘collective punishment’/ There’s nothing to be ‘punished’ for/ No faction of the Palestinian resistance, Hamas or other, has done *anything* wrong/ It’s simply genocide/ Like it has been.” He has also been a staunch critic of the US, telling a reporter in 2024: “I think the most important thing for the prosperity of humanity is the destruction of the US.” Irene Zugasti helped organize rallies earlier this week and last weekend in support of Chambers in Madrid, Barcelona and several other Spanish cities. She sees the case as bigger than whether he is extradited or not. “If they go after Fergie, they’ll go after anyone … It’s a test – to see until what point European governments feel pressure from the United States.”

Houthis claim attack on Saudi base as fighting flares with Yemeni forces

Houthi fighters have said they used drones and missiles to attack a military base in southern Saudi Arabia, as Yemen’s Riyadh-backed government described the rebels’ swift advance along the Red Sea coast as a “painful” development in a new front in the Iran war. The UN said on Sunday that nearly 86,000 people had fled Yemen, most of them since early September when the Iran-backed Houthi rebels launched a large-scale offensive that last week resulted in the capture of a key port city and an island on the Bab al-Mandab strait, a crucial shipping alternative to the strait of Hormuz. The overnight attack at the southern Sharurah base targeted “weapons depots and command and control centres that are managing the aggression against our nation and people”, the Houthi military spokesperson Yahya Saree wrote on X. The date of the operation was not specified. The Saudi civil defence force said a projectile had fallen in al-Tawwal governorate near the border with Yemen along the Red Sea, injuring two people and damaging a mosque and several other buildings. The statement blamed the Houthis. It also said sirens had sounded in Sharurah governorate but no damage was reported. Yemeni government forces said they had struck Houthi fighters in the Red Sea city of Mocha and later attacked other Houthi positions in the south-west of the country. “Air force of the armed forces targeted positions and barracks of the terrorist Houthi group with three airstrikes” in the Taiz region, the Yemeni military said on Sunday. A senior government official in Yemen said its forces would return to the Red Sea coast and fight back, after people fleeing the Houthi advance told the Associated Press they had seen forces withdrawing and urging people to run. Sultan al-Arada, a member of the ruling presidential council, described the collapse of government forces in Mocha and elsewhere on Yemen’s west coast as “painful and regrettable”. Al-Arada, who is also the governor of Yemen’s central Marib province, said in a televised interview broadcast late on Saturday night that forces “are currently regrouping and will return to the battle in one form or another”. The renewed fighting in Yemen has killed more than 500 people, according to sources on both sides. The US news site Axios reported that the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, twice called Donald Trump to request strikes on the Houthis last week, but that the request was rejected. Trump acknowledged the conversation on Saturday but did not say whether Washington would take any action. “Everything’s gonna work out fine and dandy,” he told reporters. The clashes follow a week-long Houthi offensive that culminated in the group capturing the remainder of Yemen’s Red Sea coast and several strategic islands, cementing their hold on the Bab al-Mandab strait at the sea’s southern entrance. The waterway has become an important artery for Saudi oil exports after Iran largely cut off shipments through the Gulf with its blockade on the strait of Hormuz in response to the US-Israeli assault on the country. Reuters reported last week that the Houthi advance down Yemen’s Red Sea coast came with direct guidance from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Iran describes the Houthis as an ally but publicly denies giving them military direction. Iranian ship struck near Hormuz, state media says State-run Iranian media said on Sunday that an Iranian commercial vessel had been struck early in the morning off Qeshm Island, with one person killed and four injured. The state-run IRNA news agency quoted the Qeshm governor as blaming a “terrorist enemy”. There was no immediate comment from the US military, which has struck Iranian-flagged vessels during its blockade of Iranian ports. Several explosions were reported overnight around Qeshm, the largest island in the Hormuz strait. The island, about 14 miles (22km) from the port city of Bandar Abbas, is key to Iran asserting control over the strait. Maritime trackers also received new reports of a separate attack on a ship in the strait on Sunday, adding to concerns about threats to energy supplies after Saudi Arabia shut down a vital oil pipeline. The British navy-affiliated agency UKMTO said it had ⁠a report of a projectile hitting a ⁠vessel as it moved through the strait, later adding that a fire had broken out and local authorities were evacuating those onboard. The Houthis, mountain fighters who seized the capital, Sana’a, 12 years ago and withstood years of deadly Saudi airstrikes during Yemen’s civil war, said on Saturday evening that over the past 48 hours, “Saudi enemy aircraft conducted 129 airstrikes” on areas under their control. Yemen’s civil war, which began in 2014, had been dormant since a ceasefire in 2022 but reignited in July. Saudi Arabia first entered the war on the side of Yemen’s internationally recognised government in 2015 and continues to support the Aden-based administration. The civil war has uprooted millions of people, and the latest fighting has led even more to flee their homes, with the fall of Mocha on Thursday driving many residents to Aden. The UN’s migration agency said on Sunday that more than 2,000 people fleeing Yemen had landed in Djibouti last week.

Voting under way in Sweden with far right eyeing first role in government

Voting is under way in Sweden in a high-stakes election that could lead to the far-right Sweden Democrats (SD) entering government for the first time. It comes after an unusually heated and polarised campaign punctuated by personal attacks between leaders, accusations of misinformation and Maga-inspired ads. Polls suggest an extremely tight race, with one showing just 0.3 percentage points between the left and right blocs. Polling stations across the country opened at 8am local time (7am UK time). A record 3.6 million voters took part in early voting. Early indications of results will come at 8pm when the first exit polls are released, followed by a forecast from the broadcaster SVT an hour later. The first preliminary vote count is expected between 10.30 and 11pm. Whatever the result, coalition talks are expected to take weeks if not months. The right-leaning bloc, made up of what are known as the Tidö parties, has been in power for four years. It is formed of the Moderates, the Christian Democrats and the Liberals with a supporting role for SD, Sweden’s second biggest party. The opposition left-leaning bloc is formed of Sweden’s biggest party, the Social Democrats, the Centre party, the Green party and the Left party. The rightwing coalition broke a longstanding taboo in 2022 by going into partnership with SD, which has neo-Nazi roots. SD has attempted to make itself more palatable to the mainstream by toning down its overtly racist rhetoric, while arguing that immigration is responsible for Sweden’s crime problems. After four years in a supporting role for the Moderates-run coalition government, however, during which it has shifted much of the Swedish establishment to the right, SD’s approach to the election has been more brazen. If the right-leaning coalition wins, the party has been promised a prominent role in the government, including key ministerial positions. SD’s campaign slogan of “make Sweden Sweden again” was reminiscent of Donald Trump’s “make America great again”. Its controversial ads on buses – with messages including: “Do you miss Mogadishu? The repatriation grant will help you get home” – were taken down after drivers refused to work in vehicles displaying them. The party leader, Jimmie Åkesson, was accused of sexism after asking the Social Democrats’ leader, Magdalena Andersson, why she was so angry during a TV debate. Another leading SD figure, Gustav Gellerbrant, came under national scrutiny after an investigation by the publication Expo connected his partner to Russian state actors and the spread of Russian propaganda. His partner, who is Russian, works as a civil servant for SD in parliament. Gellerbrant said in response that it was “isolated information” intended to raise suspicion about her Russian origins and has since gone on leave. Andersson, who voted on Sunday morning in the Stockholm suburb of Nacka, said the campaign had been “a tale of two sides”. “There have been a lot of lies and bickering, but at the same time there are so many sensible people out there across the country,” she told SVT. “The focus is on winning and setting a new direction for Sweden.” Abba’s Benny Andersson showed his support for the Social Democrats’ leader by performing a reworked version of Mamma Mia to supporters at the party’s headquarters, replacing the words “Mamma Mia” with “Magdalena”. The prime minister and leader of the Moderates, Ulf Kristersson, has put considerable focus in the final days of campaigning on the penalty discount applied to criminals convicted of various offences. He accused Andersson of not standing up for female rape victims. In response, she accused him of weaponising men’s violence against women. Voters say the most important election issues are healthcare, law and order, immigration and the economy. But much of the election debate has been focused on personal finance, said Radio Sweden’s senior political correspondent, Fredrik Furtenbach. “The parties have tried to outdo each other with promises of more money. It has been a sort of auction.”

Who are the 514 people accused of starting French wildfires and what motivates them?

One is a boy of 15, who threw a burning cigarette into a wood near Bordeaux. Another is a 36-year-old man who set a paper bag of rubbish on fire in bushes near Perpignan. A third is a 50-year-old woman accused of lighting 17 fires south of La Rochelle. According to the French interior ministry, since the start of a summer in which a record 115,000 hectares of forest, scrub and heathland have gone up in flames, 514 people – including 198 minors – have been arrested on suspicion of starting wildfires. Who are they, and what motivates them? Experts say arson is an under-studied field in France. It remains, according to Thierry Toutin, a criminology researcher with the national police, “a mysterious crime, often hard for people to understand”. Two hundred years ago, under Napoleon, deliberately starting a wildfire in France was a crime so grave it carried an automatic death penalty by guillotine. These days, sentences start at 10 years in jail and a €150,000 fine, rising to 15 years if protected forests or reserves burn, and life if someone is killed. Arsonists have “many different profiles”, Toutin said in an essay for The Conversation. Several French departments have set up dedicated arson groups uniting police, forestry board experts and local services to help identify, find and prosecute them, he said, but still: “These are often crimes that are unsolved, or don’t lead to convictions, because the fire has destroyed the evidence.” France’s official statistics classify wildfires by their cause: natural, such as lightning; accidental (say, a vehicle fire or electrical fault); involuntary professional (sparks from a machine); involuntary individual (a cigarette or barbecue) – and voluntary. In practice, as a government PSA has repeated all summer on radio, TV and online, nine out of 10 fires are caused by human activity, with roughly two-thirds classed as involuntary (which, if negligence is proven, carries a jail term of one to five years). That means fully one-third of wildfires in France each year are set deliberately, with the intention of doing harm. In 2025, the last year for which full figures are available, deliberate acts of arson were the biggest single cause of forest fires in France, accounting for 29.4% of blazes. Among those convicted this summer are a 27-year-old man diagnosed with autism and schizophrenia who set fire to a letter to his late daughter in tinder-dry vegetation near Béziers. He was sentenced to four years of detention and treatment. Perpignan court last week sentenced a 51-year-old man to five years in prison for lighting four fires in July and August. In Les Sables d’Olonnes, a volunteer firefighter – reported to police by his superiors – was handed a three-year suspended sentence. In Lyon, a 29-year-old man with a police record for theft, trafficking and domestic violence was convicted of setting a fire that destroyed more than a hectare of land, took 71 firefighters to extinguish and forced the evacuation of 150 people. Those convicted of negligence include a motorist who lit a fire to alert emergency services after he broke down (six months, suspended) and two restaurant owners in the south-west who defied a red fire alert to light a charcoal grill and set off fireworks. An early analysis based on police reports and obtained by Le Figaro showed 97.5 % of arson suspects arrested this year have been men, aged on average 32.5, with 28.7% under 18. More than 95% were French citizens. Of a relatively small sample of 80 suspects, 37 were unemployed. Exactly what drove them to act is often much harder to establish. In principle, criminologists identify four main categories of motivation. Some arson attacks are carried out in the context of a conflict: a dispute with a neighbour; criminal rivalry between gangs; revenge against someone or something. Other arsonists may act for financial gain, such as a false insurance claim, or out of ideological or political conviction. The remainder display some kind of pathology, often psychological – including a small number of genuine pyromaniacs. “Arsonists may be after money, or revenge, or be trying to cover up a crime. They may be under the influence of alcohol or other substances,” said Laurent Layet, a psychiatrist. “A pyromaniac’s sole objective is to set fire to something.” Pyromaniacs “have difficulty organising their personalities”, Layet told France Inter radio. “They are often impulsive, and they have trouble controlling their emotions. Often, they are quite isolated socially.” Classified as an impulse-control disorder, pyromania is characterised by “a fascination with fire, by a mounting tension before the act, and then a feeling of pleasure or relief immediately afterwards”, he said. But pyromaniacs are typically organised, aware of the consequences of their acts, and considered criminally responsible. They also represent barely 5% of the people who deliberately set fires. Another equally small group are firefighters – mostly volunteers, very rarely professionals – who deliberately set fires for the glory that comes from extinguishing them. Over the years, France’s departmental fire services have set up filtering mechanisms to detect such personalities during the recruitment process, including psychological tests. They acknowledge that each year, some slip through the net. But the motivation of most people who deliberately light wildfires is rarely quite so clearcut. For many, it boils down to an ill-defined “act of defiance – to confront the system, and get pleasure from destroying other people’s property”, said Johanna Rozenblum, a clinical psychologist who works with the fire service. A strikingly large proportion of the arsonists she had dealt with had “marked antisocial profiles”, Rozenblum said. And in the case of minors, adolescent impulsiveness and frustration combine with “immaturity and internal revolt” to prevent them fully realising the devastating scale of the damage they risk doing.