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Russian polar station Barentsburg on Spitsbergen: Solution found after "good dialogue".
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JONATHAN NACKSTRAND / AFP
Norway and Russia have settled a dispute over a cargo shipment for Russian miners on Svalbard.
The Foreign Ministry in Oslo announced on Wednesday that the containers with Russian cargo blocked at the border had been taken by Norwegian transporters to the port of Tromso and are now en route by ship to the Arctic archipelago.
The solution was found after a "good dialogue" with Russia and does not mean that Norway is "backing down," a ministry spokeswoman said.
"We never intended to block a delivery," she said. The possible solutions "were there from the start."
The Russian consul in Spitsbergen, Sergei Gushin, confirmed that Oslo allowed Norwegian hauliers to pick up the cargo and use it to cross the border.
»All the time there was close contact between the Russian and Norwegian foreign ministries.
The situation has been resolved,” Gushin said on his country's state television.
According to Guschin, the disputed cargo includes 20 tons, including seven tons of food, as well as spare parts and important equipment to prepare for the winter.
Against the background of the sanctions against Russia because of the Ukraine war, Norway stopped a truck delivery for Russian miners on Svalbard on the border with Russia in mid-June.
Foreign Minister Anniken Huitfeldt stated at the time that the sanctions prohibited Russian freight traffic from entering Norwegian territory.
However, Norway respects a hundred-year-old agreement for Svalbard.
Russia threatened massively
Russia then threatened to take countermeasures, and the Foreign Ministry in Moscow called in the Norwegian chargé d'affaires.
The leader of Russia's lower house, Vyacheslav Volodin, called on Tuesday for the cancellation of a maritime border agreement with Norway.
According to Norwegian media reports from June, the country's ambassador had been summoned to the Foreign Ministry because of the stopped delivery.
Just a few hours after the conversation, a cyber attack temporarily paralyzed public and private websites in Norway.
Norwegian security officials attributed the attack to a "pro-Russian criminal group."
The Spitsbergen archipelago is part of Norway.
However, an international treaty concluded in Paris in 1920 grants a number of countries, including Russia, the right to mine raw materials there.
Russia and before that the Soviet Union have been mining coal there for decades.
sol/dpa/AP
