In a mini-warehouse in the Stockholm neighborhood of Skarpnäck, a district with a reputation for outsider politics, is the office of a man on a mission.

Surrounded by dictionaries and reference books in Swedish and Russian, Stefan Lindgren, a translator in his late sixties, is one of a small but vocal band of Swedes who think that Swedish mainstream media has misrepresented Russia as a foe rather than a friend, and want to present an alternative view.

“If you look at developments in Russia, it by and large meets the criteria we would have for a democracy — they have elections, anyone can form a political party, and they have a media that is actually more pluralistic than our own here in Sweden,” Lindgren claimed during a recent interview.

That means, he argued, that “the same old anti-Russian propaganda” no longer makes sense.