Russia, Norway, And A Ship Seizure At The Heart Of The Arctic’s Growing Divide

The Arctic has been sliding toward confrontation for several years now, and the drift has picked up momentum since Russia’s SMO in Ukraine in 2022. Finland and Sweden gave up decades of ‘military non-alignment’ and joined NATO. Norway expanded its Arctic brigade, Denmark sent conscripts to Greenland for the first time in living memory, and allied militaries built new command structures in the High North, from the air operations centre at Bodø to the Arctic Sentry framework linking existing exercises together. Russia, for its part, has leaned harder on its Northern Fleet, its Kola Peninsula nuclear assets, and its partnership…