Peter Ericson

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Peter Ericson (born 11 September 1964 in Gothenburg, Sweden) is a Swedish diplomat and the ambassador to Finland. He studied economics at the Stockholm School of Economics, graduating in 1989, and did his military service at Tolkskolan. He joined the Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs in 1989 and has worked at the embassies in Washington, Brussels and Moscow, as well as at the UN in New York. He has also served as a ministerial adviser and head of the Foreign Ministry’s security policy unit.

Ericson was Sweden’s ambassador in Moscow from September 2015 to 2019, and then became consul-general in Istanbul on 1 September 2019. He has lived in Moscow on three occasions: starting in 1984 during Gorbachev’s rise to power, 1990–1994 around the collapse of the Soviet Union, and 2015–2019 after Russia’s annexation of Crimea and the war in eastern Ukraine. On 30 May 2024, he was appointed ambassador in Helsinki. Before that, he headed the Ministry of Foreign Affairs unit for Eastern Europe and Central Asia.

In a November 2024 interview, Ericson said it is hard to have talks with Putin’s Russia because of misinformation, and he does not expect a negotiated peace in Ukraine. He views Russia as the biggest security problem for Finland and Sweden for a long time.