72-hours visa-freedom and new multi-million cruise port are of little help. Murmansk gets only half the number of port calls this season compared with 2015.
Despite recent sabre-rattling, both the United States and Russia have met the limits set for the nuclear arsenal under the New START Treaty, which enters force today.
When a training missile exploded in the silo, Captain Igor Grishkov immediately dived his enormous Typhoon submarine to flush away burning rocket fuel before the other nuclear weapon-tipped missiles were set on fire.
Journalists could be contacted by intelligence officers and used to covertly impact public debate and political decisions, according to the Police Security Service (PST).
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.