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Sweden lost its second national security adviser this year in embarrassing circumstances, after the latest candidate resigned hours into the job because of sensitive pictures of him on a dating app.
Tobias Thyberg became the nation’s second ever national security adviser on Thursday, but resigned that evening after local newspaper Dagens Nyheter asked questions about a “sensitive image” that he conceded came from an old account he had on dating app Grindr. Experts say such images could have left him open to being blackmailed.
The latest resignation is further embarrassment for Sweden and its centre-right Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson, who created the post of national security adviser to boost the country’s strategic profile after years of underspending on the military.
Thyberg’s exit came months after his predecessor Henrik Landerholm was forced to step down after leaving confidential documents in an unlocked hotel safe, an incident over which he was charged with negligence in handling classified information. Swedish media also reported that he had left a mobile phone at the Hungarian embassy and a notebook at a radio station. He denies wrongdoing.
The resignations raise questions about the prime minister’s judgment, as Landerholm was a close childhood friend of his. Thyberg, a former Swedish ambassador to Ukraine, was due to accompany Kristersson on Thursday to Oslo for a meeting of the Joint Expeditionary Force, a UK-led group of Northern European countries.
Kristersson said there had been a “system failure” that such old pictures had not been disclosed previously. “It is very serious,” the Swedish prime minister said on Friday.
Johan Stuart, a state secretary for Kristersson, told Swedish media that the picture of Thyberg was “unknown” to the government and was “obviously serious”. He added that a new recruitment process would start.
Thyberg told Dagens Nyheter on Friday about the Grindr image: “I should have informed [the government] about this but I did not.” The Financial Times attempted to contact Thyberg and Landerholm through the Swedish government but was initially unsuccessful.
Diplomatic sources in the Nordics and Baltics said that efforts towards peace in Ukraine and relationships with the US had been spearheaded by Finnish President Alexander Stubb and Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre, not the region’s most populous country Sweden.
The duo initiated calls with both US President Donald Trump and his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Thursday from the JEF summit.
Officials from Nato countries have contrasted the steady professionalism of Finland with a more chaotic approach of Sweden when the two countries applied for membership of the defence alliance after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Finland became a member the following year, but Sweden’s application was held up for almost a year due to objections, including from Turkey.
Kristersson has tried to sharpen Sweden’s security focus, announcing in March a big increase in defence spending from the current 2.4 per cent of GDP to 3.5 per cent by 2030. Sweden had previously cut military expenditure substantially after the “peace dividend” following the end of the cold war.
