Despite repeated warnings from local authorities, Russian diplomat Nikolai Konygin showed up at the war monument in the Norwegian border town to lay down a wreath "to the memory of warriors and liberators that fell in the battle against Nazism."
The war president that is ready to spend one third of his state budget on national security tells Chinese President Xi Jinping that Russia is developing grand infrastructure connections towards the East.
The 1,300 km long pipeline will provide natural gas to households in Murmansk and Karelia and supply a new LNG plant in the Kola Bay. The Kremlin has approved the project, company CEO Leonid Mikhelson says.
Almost two months after it set out from the Kola Peninsula, nuclear powered Borei-class sub Generalissimus Suvorov arrives in its new home base of Vilyuchinsk.
The new regional government of Hans-Jacob Bønå does not want any official Russian representatives at next year's 80-year anniversary of Soviet liberation of East Finnmark. A similar political shift has come to the border town of Kirkenes, where a new mayor intends to scrap cooperation with neighbouring Russian region of Pechenga.
Stanislav Trutnev lied severely wounded and unconscious on the ground when we was picked up by Ukrainian soldiers and brought to hospital in Kharkiv. The lieutenant that is expert on underwater sabotage operations is one of several POWs from the far northern Russian region of Murmansk.
Atle is journalist and Publisher of the Independent Barents Observer.
In 2002, he founded the Barents Observer. He was editor until 2009 and later worked as journalist and project coordinator for several European cross-border cooperation projects. In late 2015, following a conflict over editorial rights, he re-established the Barents Observer as an independent and non-profit stock company along with the rest of the newspaper crew.
Atle has a degree in Russian studies from the University of Oslo and studied journalism at the Moscow State University.