Elisabeth Braw is a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, the author of the award-winning “Goodbye Globalization” and a regular columnist for POLITICO.
What happens in Svalbard doesn’t look like it’ll be staying in Svalbard.
The archipelago is located nearly 1,000 kilometers from Norway’s northernmost city, Tromsø, and is home to just 3,000-or-so people. In recent years, however, Russia has repeatedly used it to experiment with different provocations. And now, the Kremlin has accused Norway of militarizing the archipelago, creating a potential pretext for military action.
Svalbard is indisputably remote as well as cold, but the archipelago is strategically positioned, and Russia could well decide to use it as a test case — which means it’s time we start keeping a closer eye on Svalbard.
Svalbard, or Spitsbergen as it’s also known, has been inhabited by humans ever since whalers discovered the archipelago in the 1600s. And after coal was discovered there in the late 1800s, the islands’ attractiveness grew further. In fact, it grew so much that the world’s nations had to decide which country Svalbard should belong to, and the winner was, unsurprisingly, Norway — the country located closest to it (though 930 kilometers is some distance away).
In the Svalbard Treaty — which was signed by Norway, the U.S., the U.K., Sweden, Japan and a small number of other countries in 1920 — Norway was awarded the archipelago, and in exchange, it promised to allow citizens and companies from the other signatory countries to live, work and operate there. It also promised not to militarize Svalbard.
The Soviet Union signed the treaty in 1935 and proceeded to organize a Soviet presence centered around the coal mines it ran there. In fact, the Soviets built a model village that functioned like a mini-Soviet Union until 1998, when Russia’s Arktikugol closed its Svalbard mines and the company town Pyramiden was hastily abandoned. (To this day, Pyramiden is a ghost town that looks pretty much the same way it did in 1988.)
But Russia didn’t completely leave Svalbard.
Rather, in recent years, Russian officials and other representatives have been conducting various manifestations on the archipelago. For example, in 2015, Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin — who had been sanctioned by the West — landed on Svalbard without Norway’s permission and proceeded to mock Norwegians on social media. Then, on May 9 2023, Russians conducted a military-style Victory Day parade led by their consul general, the Barents Observer reported. Last year, Arktikugol’s director and others planted Soviet flags in Pyramiden.
And now, the Kremlin has issued a complaint against what it calls Norwegian militarization of Svalbard.
In a meeting with Norway’s ambassador to Russia earlier this month, senior officials from Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs noted that “contrary to the international legal regime established by the 1920 Svalbard Treaty, which provides for the exclusively peaceful development of the archipelago and prohibits the use of its territory for military purposes, the area is increasingly involved in Norway’s military and political planning with the participation of the US and NATO,” TASS reported.
The state-owned Russian news agency also quoted the ministry as claiming “dual-purpose facilities are operating on the archipelago, allowing, along with civilian tasks, to perform military ones, including combat operations on the territory of third countries.”
The facts, however, are these: Svalbard isn’t involved in Norway’s “military and political planning.” There’s no Norwegian military use of the archipelago — and especially no such use by NATO or the U.S. The Svalbard Treaty prohibits naval bases and military fortifications, and there are no such installations on any of the islands — though Norwegian naval vessels do patrol the waters around the archipelago, and the Norwegian armed forces assist local authorities’ crisis response, as happened in 2017, when a Russian helicopter crashed near Svalbard’s largest town, Barentsburg.
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Rather, the party upsetting the apple cart is Russia, which seems to resent the demise of its Soviet glory days on Svalbard. More troublingly, the Kremlin also seems to view the archipelago as a place to test new ways of asserting itself and undermining the West. A sanctioned Russian official arriving on Svalbard without permission, the head of Arktikugol planting a Soviet flag and a Victory Day parade (even though the Nazis never occupied Svalbard) — these are all unsubtle provocations the Norwegian government can do little about.
And now the Kremlin has upped the ante.
In accusing Oslo of violating the Svalbard Treaty, Russia has given itself the option of responding to this alleged violation. It’s a move that follows Moscow’s playbook in Ukraine, where it has, at various points, claimed to be responding to Ukrainian misdeeds. And while Norway can insist it’s not violating the Svalbard Treaty, that’s hardly going to convince a regime that’s operationalized peddling untruths.
How might Russia respond to Norway’s alleged infraction? It’s impossible to know. But one thing is certain: Although Svalbard may be extremely remote, what happens there won’t stay there.
NATO members and other allies would do well to start thinking about how they’d respond if Russia took action against one of its most remote geographies. There are even things ordinary citizens can do too — such as visiting the archipelago to demonstrate they’re paying attention.