Sweden’s decision to send 16 Gripen fighter jets to Ukraine is more than another weapons transfer. It is the latest sign of a deeper shift that has emerged during Russia’s full-scale invasion: Ukraine’s growing alignment with the Nordic countries.
Dmytro Kuleba, Ukraine’s former foreign minister, recently posed the question directly. “Is Ukraine becoming a Nordic country?” he wrote following reports of the Gripen deal.
Not geographically, Kuleba argued, but strategically. For decades, Ukrainians viewed their place in Europe largely through the lens of Central and Eastern Europe. Since 2022, however, Ukraine’s political and military center of gravity has increasingly shifted northward toward countries that have become some of Kyiv’s strongest and most consistent supporters.
Kuleba points to three reasons for this shift: Northern Europe’s leadership in supporting Ukraine, growing friction with some partners in Central Europe, and Ukraine’s search for reliable strategic anchors in Europe. The result has been what he describes as a renaissance in Ukraine’s relations with Northern Europe.
The military dimension of that relationship continues growing. If delivered by early 2027, Sweden’s Gripens could provide Ukraine with a powerful new tool against Russian glide-bomb attacks, particularly if accompanied by Meteor long-range air-to-air missiles.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has said Gripen fighters equipped with Meteor missiles, which have a range of more than 200 kilometers, could help push Russian aircraft far enough back to curb Moscow’s mass use of guided bombs against Ukrainian forces.
But the growing Nordic-Ukrainian partnership runs deeper than military assistance. “The Nordic countries’ commitment to Ukraine transcends a national security interest due to geographic proximity; it has evolved into a shared mission,” Maria Popova, an associate professor of political science at McGill University, said in an interview with the author.
“In resisting Russia’s invasion, Ukrainians have rejected the Russian governance model defined by repression and lawlessness. Instead, they are fighting for individual freedoms, democracy and the rule of law – the same ideals that define and anchor Nordic societies.”
The idea that Ukraine belongs within a broader Nordic community is not entirely new. Yet historians caution against viewing Ukraine through a single regional identity. “Ukraine is a country of many worlds, and which one dominates over the others depends on current circumstances,” said Ukrainian historian Yaroslav Hrytsak.
Ukraine’s history has always crossed several worlds. The Vikings and Varangians helped shape Kyivan Rus, while Byzantine, Polish, Austrian, Ottoman and Russian influences later left their mark. For Hrytsak, the more useful question is not whether Ukraine is a Nordic country, but to what extent it can be regarded as one.
Other historians are more skeptical. Serhii Plokhii of Harvard University said that Ukraine has never been a Nordic country in any historical sense. “Ukraine never was a Nordic country,” Plokhii said. “The only connection is through the Vikings and Charles XII’s venture into Ukraine in 1708.”
That venture nevertheless occupies an important place in Ukrainian historical memory. During the Great Northern War, Ukrainian Hetman Ivan Mazepa allied with Swedish King Charles XII in an effort to break free from Moscow’s growing influence. The alliance culminated in the Battle of Poltava in 1709, one of the most consequential battles in Eastern European history.
Russia and Ukraine continued to view Poltava very differently three centuries later. At the 2009 anniversary in Poltava, Plokhii wrote that Russia celebrated a victory that helped make it a European power, while Ukraine marked a defeat that buried Mazepa’s hopes of breaking free from Moscow.
Russia’s invasion has brought those historical connections back into focus. More than a thousand years after Scandinavian Varangians became intertwined with the emergence of Kyivan Rus, Ukraine is once again looking northward. Today, that alignment is expressed not through dynastic alliances but through deepening ties with the Nordic countries, driven by shared security interests and concern over Russian aggression.
For Alexander Motyl, a professor of political science at Rutgers University-Newark, that threat perception now matters more than historical analogies.
“Proximity to Russia outweighs history,” Motyl said. Norway shares a border with Russia, Finland lived for decades under the shadow of “Finlandization,” and Sweden sits in the middle of a region newly alert to Russian pressure. Motyl noted that even before the full-scale invasion, Norway had produced Occupied, a television series imagining a Russian takeover through hybrid war.
That shared sense of vulnerability is now reshaping Europe’s security map. In Motyl’s view, geopolitical logic is likely to draw Ukraine, the Scandinavian countries, Poland, the Baltic states and Germany closer together.
Russia’s invasion transformed not only Ukraine’s security outlook but that of Northern Europe itself. Finland abandoned decades of military non-alignment to join NATO in 2023, while Sweden followed in 2024. Ukraine now looks increasingly like a natural partner for a Nordic region that has become more militarily integrated and more focused on deterring Russia.
That alignment is increasingly reflected in policy. In February 2026, Sweden announced one of its largest military aid packages of the war, worth nearly SEK 12.9 billion ($1.4 billion), including air-defense systems, drones, long-range weapons and ammunition. Swedish military support since 2022 exceeds SEK 100 billion.
Finland has moved in the same direction. On June 1, Helsinki announced its 33rd military aid package for Ukraine, worth about €128 million, bringing Finland’s total defense support since the full-scale invasion to €3.4 billion. Norway has also signaled it is ready to expand support for Ukraine’s air defenses and contribute to Europe’s longer-term protection against ballistic missile threats.
Throughout the war, Denmark has been one of Ukraine’s most important military backers relative to its size. Copenhagen played a leading role in establishing the F-16 coalition and was the first country to approve the transfer of the fighter jets to Ukraine.
In August 2025, the Swiss newspaper Neue Zürcher Zeitung wrote that “Denmark supports Ukraine more per capita and as a percentage of GDP than any other country,” underscoring the extent to which Copenhagen has positioned itself at the forefront of European support for Kyiv.
Yet the relationship increasingly flows both ways. Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen recently argued that Europe can no longer think of Ukraine solely as a recipient of support. Europe, she says, increasingly depends on Ukraine for its own security.
Frederiksen has also praised Ukraine’s wartime innovation ecosystem, highlighting how Ukrainian engineers, startups, universities, manufacturers and frontline soldiers have created one of the world’s most dynamic defense-industrial networks. The so-called Danish Model, under which European governments finance weapons production inside Ukraine, reflects a growing recognition that Europe has as much to learn from Ukraine as Ukraine does from Europe.
Ukraine’s long-range drones are now making appearances in places Moscow once treated as comfortably distant from the war, including St. Petersburg and the Baltic region. That is useful for Kyiv, but it is also useful for the Nordic and Baltic states watching Russia’s northern flank.
Whether Ukraine is truly becoming a Nordic country remains open to debate. As Hrytsak notes, Ukraine has always existed at the intersection of multiple worlds. As Plokhii cautions, the historical links to Northern Europe should not be overstated.
But Kuleba’s broader point may be difficult to dismiss. Ukraine is not changing its geography. Yet its strategic and political orientation is moving northward. The Gripen deal is only the latest sign that Ukraine’s future may be tied more closely to Stockholm, Copenhagen, Helsinki and Oslo than many would have imagined before Russia’s invasion.
“The Vikings are returning to Ukraine. And Ukrainians are charting their country’s path to the North,” said Kuleba.
