A long-standing agreement on emergencies is no longer tenable since Sweden joined the US-led military bloc

Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin has ordered that an information sharing agreement with Sweden on nuclear accidents and nuclear installations be abandoned, after Stockholm joined NATO last year.

The relevant document was signed by Mishustin on June 24 and published on the state portal for legal information on Friday.

The deal, signed by the USSR and Sweden in 1988, taking force of April that year, stemmed from the 1986 International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Convention on Early Notification of a Nuclear Accident, in which the agency's members agreed to notify each other of any nuclear accidents on their territory that could affect other countries.

Scientists at the Swedish nuclear power station at Forsmark were among the first in the west to detect increasing radiation levels on April 28th 1986, two days after the explosion at the Chernobyl power plant in Ukraine.

Sweden joined NATO in March 2024, abandoning its long-standing policy of neutrality. Stockholm has provided almost $10 billion in military and other assistance to Kiev since February 2022, while also announcing a major rearmament program at home.

Russia constitutionally remains a successor state of the Soviet Union, having exclusively incurred the bloc's debt upon its dissolution, and Moscow recognises international treaties signed by the USSR.

Russian ambassador to Stockholm Sergey Belyaev told RIA-Novosti in May that Stockholm's stance "indicates that Sweden has completely lost its status of a neutral country and is turning into a springboard for the implementation of NATO's militaristic ambitions."