Far-right will back Sweden's new right-wing government

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Conservative leader Ulf Kristersson said Friday that three Swedish right-wing parties have agreed to form a minority government, with the far-right Sweden Democrats lending unprecedented support.

The newly elected government immediately announced plans to build new nuclear reactors to meet Sweden's rising electricity demand.

"New nuclear reactors will be built", the leader of the Christian Democrats Ebba Busch told reporters.

Sweden has recently shut down six of its 12 reactors, and the remaining ones, located at three nuclear power plants, generate approximately 30 percent of the country's electricity.

However, the country has struggled to find viable alternative energy sources to replace nuclear power, with renewable energies unable to meet the country's needs entirely.

The outgoing Social Democratic government, which has been in power for the past eight years, has traditionally been opposed to the construction of new reactors, but earlier this year acknowledged that nuclear energy would be critical for the foreseeable future.

Vattenfall, a Swedish energy company, announced in June that it was looking into the possibility of building at least two small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs).

Meanwhile, Kristersson, who is expected to become the next Prime Minister, told reporters that the new coalition government would be made up of the Moderates, Christian Democrats, and Liberals, all of whom would "cooperate with the Sweden Democrats in parliament."

The speaker of parliament is expected to call a vote on Kristersson as Prime Minister on Monday, one month after the right-wing won a narrow victory in a general election, deposing the Social Democrats after eight years in power.

The four right-wing parties have 176 of the 349 seats in parliament.

It is worth noting that the far-right Sweden Democrats, once shunned as political outcasts in the country, were the big winners in the September 11 election.

They won a record 20.5 percent of the vote, trailing outgoing Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson's Social Democrats, who have dominated Swedish politics since the 1930s.

Winter is here

The EU has been preparing for a gas shortage this winter. On a proposal from the European Commission, European energy ministers had approved a 15% reduction in their gas consumption between August 1 and March 31, compared to their average consumption over the same period in the past five years.

Sweden, which has the highest gasoline prices in Europe, announced a temporary tax decrease in March as part of a $1.5 billion package of measures.

Sweden can provide 2,400 megawatts, but the country is also facing potential shortages and has already resorted to oil backup plants.

EU chief Ursula von der Leyen has lately proposed that the bloc's 27 nations agree on placing a price cap on Russian gas imports.

Von der Leyen's decision comes as a means of imposing further sanctions on Russia as the West looks for more means of punishing the country over the war in Ukraine.

Capping prices, as some Western countries are considering, "would be an absolutely stupid decision," Putin told the Eastern Economic Forum in the Pacific port city of Vladivostok.

The G7 industrialized nations pledged last week to work quickly to establish a price cap on Russian oil imports in order to cut off a key source of funding for Moscow's military activity in Ukraine.

The West: double standards

Unsurprisingly, the West and its tools – the United Nations (UN), and International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) will not condemn Sweden’s decision to build at least two nuclear reactors.

Meanwhile, the US is imposing additional sanctions that would prevent the Iranian leadership from conducting safe nuclear energy research. Whereas other Western countries and their allies including the Israeli occupation freely advance their suspicious nuclear program.