The newspaper Expo revealed last week that a Sweden Democratic official, now a political expert in the constitutional committee, has participated in a Russian invitation trip to Moscow and for several years made pro-Russian posts. When Putin invaded Crimea, she wrote, for example, that "everyone welcomes the Russians - they have been waiting for this for a long time," according to the review.
The newspaper has also shown that she moves in a diaspora network with connections to the Russian embassy and authorities in Russia.
- There is very serious information in this article, there is no doubt about it, SD leader Jimmie Åkesson said on Friday.
Since then, the Sweden Democrats have taken up the disclosure at several internal meetings with the temporary "election staff", which also includes the press department. DN has been in contact with several central sources in the party who speak anonymously, citing that the talks are about sensitive issues such as security checks.
A large part of Expo's review concerns an amateur theater group in Sweden that the SD official is involved in in his spare time. There are also several people who had prominent roles in the Russian Federation Rurik, which was closed after extensive media scrutiny. The director of the theater, with whom the SD official himself has sought money together on behalf of the theater, has, according to Expo, participated in conferences where people from the Russian intelligence service participated.
Internally in SD, the information from Expo's review is perceived as undramatic from a security perspective, according to DN's sources.
The party has been in ongoing contact with the Government Offices' security department and Säpo since a couple of days before the publication of Expo's article, when the party should have forwarded all material to the relevant bodies.
According to information to DN, no one, in the dialogues that have been held, has expressed that the Sweden Democrats should take any measures. The signal from Säpo should be that what appears in the article is not new information, nor should it have led to any new assessments, but be in line with what is already known.
The SD official is now on parental leave. Gustav Gellerbrant, her partner who is head of SD's strength in the coordination office, has also gone on parental leave after the disclosure. Internally in the party, understanding is expressed for a pressured situation on the personal level, as the couple has a baby at home.
Gellerbrant himself has made a post on social media where he states that he has been fully transparent in the security checks he underwent, which should also have been renewed after he began the relationship with the SD official.
- You have to state it. So had he not done it, we would have known by now. Then he would have lost his security classification, says an SD source with insight into the processes of the past few days.
From the Moderates, the reactions to Expo's disclosure have been strong. Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson has demanded that the SD official terminate his service, if the information is correct. Gunnar Strömmer (M) has spoken in similar terms. "Pro-Russian views have no place in parties that want to take responsibility for Sweden," wrote the Minister of Justice in a statement to TT.
The moderates' initial reactions have angered the leadership of the Sweden Democrats.
- We think they have handled this poorly. And we have communicated that to them. What reason did they have for doing so? They knew what the source was, says an SD source.
The Expo foundation is a religiously and party-politically unbound, anti-racist foundation, with no domicile on any right or left scale. Internally, the Sweden Democrats see the newspaper as a political opponent.
The atmosphere between the Tidöparties is still described as stable, above all because the signals from Säpo worked reassuringly. SD is now in close contact with Gustav Gellerbrant, and has recently learned that no search of the couple's house has taken place, according to DN's sources.
- The slightest suspicion that there might have been an intention, and a deliberate disclosure of information to a foreign power, would have caused them to go to their home and seize all the electronics already several days ago, says an SD source.
But several national and international security experts that Aftonbladet has been in contact with now describe how the female SD official is well known in international security circles.
- She has been "flagged" among me and my colleagues in security circles for almost a decade now, because of her relations with the Kremlin, says the Ukrainian political scientist Anton Shekhovtsov to Aftonbladet.
