Built for special missions, “Belgorod” can carry deep-sea equipment like nuclear reactors to the Arctic seabed, as well as deploying the Poseidon second nuclear strike drone.
The army is well underway with establishing a new Cavalry Battalion, Home Guard and a Ranger Company in Norway's northernmost region bordering Russia’s heavy militarized Kola Peninsula.
Dumping of tailings into the Repparfjord on Norway’s Barents Sea coast will not be problematic in such a way that we shouldn’t allow for mining, argues Norway’s Minister of Trade and Industry Torbjørn Røe Isaksen
The Northern Fleet’s press service says the largest missile cruisers, long-range bombers, anti-submarine aircraft, helicopters and fighter jets took part in an exercise in the Norwegian Sea.
Thomas Nilsen is editor of the Independent Barents Observer with its news desk located in Kirkenes, northern Norway. He has a long experience in media cooperation across the borders in the high north of Europe, both as radio- and newspaper reporter all the way back to the days before the breakup of the Soviet Union.
Nilsen has been editor of Barents Observer since 2009.
He was Deputy Head of the Norwegian Barents Secretariat from 2004-2009. Until 2003, he worked 12 years for the Bellona Foundation’s Russian study group, focusing on nuclear safety issues and general environmental challenges in northern areas and the Arctic.
Thomas has been traveling extensively across northern Scandinavia and Arctic Russia since the late 80’s working for different media and organizations. He is also a guide at sea and in remote locations in the Russian north for various groups and regularly lectures on security issues, environmental and socio-economic development.
Thomas Nilsen studied at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology.