After threats: Norway declares dispute with Russia over delivery for Spitsbergen over

Created: 07/07/2022 05:11

By: Florian Naumann

Soviet history on Spitsbergen: The mining settlement Pyramida is deserted - Russians are still settling elsewhere on the archipelago.

© Danita Delimont/www.imago-images.de

Russia is feeling the effects of sanctions - especially at geographically neuralgic points.

Now a conflict with Norway is approaching.

The first threats can be heard.

Update from July 6, 8 p.m .:

Norway says it has settled a dispute with Russia over a cargo delivery for Russian miners on Svalbard.

The Foreign Ministry in Oslo said the containers of 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.

Russia in the sanctions dispute: After Lithuania, now also problems with Norway

First report from July 6th:

Oslo/Moscow - Russia owns and uses some difficult located territories in Europe.

This is becoming a problem for Vladimir Putin's Kremlin in the Ukraine conflict: After the Baltic Sea exclave of Kaliningrad, there is now a dispute over another region.

This time it's the Arctic archipelago of Spitsbergen.

Because Norway has blocked a Russian transport of goods to the archipelago because of the sanctions in the Ukraine war - now the lower house in Moscow is threatening to terminate a very delicate border agreement with the Scandinavians.

The "Spitsbergen Treaty", as it is called in Norway, regulates the sea borders in the Barents Sea.

In 2010, the paper ended a decades-long dispute over the resource-rich region.

Russia in the sanctions dispute: Parliamentarians threaten Norway with termination of the agreement

On Tuesday (5 July), the Russian lower house chairman, Vyacheslav Volodin, indirectly threatened the end of the solution that had been laboriously negotiated by Dmitry Medvedev and today's NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg.

The chairman of the foreign affairs committee should take a close look at the agreement, said Volodin, a member of parliament for the pro-Putin party United Russia, according to Russian agency reports.

The communist MP Mikhail Matveyev had previously raised the issue – in a comparatively aggressive tone, as noted by the Norwegian media.

“We ceded 175,000 square kilometers of the Barents Sea to Norway.

Today we are witnessing that Norway is stopping food deliveries to Svalbard, to our settlements,” the portal

Matveyev, citing the Russian agency Ria Novosti.

Happier moments: Jens Stoltenberg and Dmitri Medvedev 2010 in Oslo.

© imago stock&people/itar-tass

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Meanwhile, the Russian Consul General on Svalbard, Sergei Gustsin, apparently tried to grab Norway by the arctic honor: "That doesn't suit an arctic country like Norway.

It's hard to live on Spitsbergen, and it's not very good that Norway is sabotaging the long-established Russian settlements in the Arctic," he told TV channel Rossija24, as noted by the Norwegian tabloid

.

The question also found its way into the now notorious Russian state television.

Russia and Norway: "Starvation in the Arctic" - expert observes "violent exaggerations"

The background to the dispute: Russia had accused Norway last week of having blocked the loading of a ship destined for Russian miners on Svalbard.

, the scientist Arild Moe from the Frditjof Nansen Institute put

the allegations into perspective: "It's about deliveries via the Norwegian mainland.

This is absolutely not an embargo for goods deliveries to Spitzbergen.”

Moe attested to the Russian debate as "heavy exaggerations".

Individual commentators on the Internet have even accused Norway of wanting to “starve out” Russians on Svalbard.

That is far from reality.

At the same time, however, it should also be noted that the Russian Foreign Ministry did not accuse Oslo of breaking the Spitsbergen Agreement, but only of a "cheeky" act.

The Norwegian Foreign Ministry, in turn, called on Russia to comply with the agreement.

It contains "no revision clause," the ministry said.

"It's common for this type of border agreement to last indefinitely." Unlike Sweden and Finland, Norway has been a member of NATO for quite some time.

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