[1] During his youth, he spent the summers in Kuusamo, his mother's village on the Finnish-Russian border, which had been burned by Soviet partisans during the Continuation War.

When asked about his release from military service by Svenska Dagbladet's defence correspondent Jonas Gummesson in 2016, Hultqvist refused to comment.

He also reportedly received some pushback from fellow Social Democrats: "In the party, they think I'm a crank for talking so much about Russia", Hultqvist told Dagens Nyheter's defence correspondent Mikael Holmström in 2011.

As defence minister, Hultqvist pushed for Sweden's rearmament, oversaw the reintroduction of conscription, and led the Swedish military toward closer cooperation with NATO and the United States.

[2] In 2018, Finnish President Sauli Niinistö (no relation) awarded Hultqvist the Grand Cross of the Order of the Lion of Finland in recognition of his work to strengthen Swedish-Finnish defence cooperation.

[5] Hultqvist's misgivings about Vladimir Putin's government in Russia were underscored in several interviews by references to his family background and the time he spent in Kuusamo.

On receiving the decoration, he commented that he was proud to be part of a government that had, in 2014, made Sweden the first Western European nation to officially recognise Palestinian statehood.

[7] On 26 July 2017, a majority in the Riksdag announced they would put forward a vote of no confidence against him and two other ministers, in response to a scandal relating to a leak of classified information.

[11] Opposition criticism of Hultqvist picked up again in 2018, during a drawn-out debate over Sweden's defence budget, in which the liberal and conservative parties favoured higher spending than the government.

[13] After the Russian invasion of Ukraine and Sweden applied to become a member of NATO, Hullqvist met with US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin at the Pentagon, to coordinate the Swedish accession with the US.