Thomas Nilsen

Norway introduces border control

Basic principles of free movement stipulated in the Schengen agreement are in jeopardy. Norway tightens border with identity checks on buses, trains and ferries.
November 26, 2015

World's northernmost radioactive waste plant opens

“The plant is one of the largest international projects in the sphere of global nuclear safety,” says Murmansk Governor Marina Kovtun.
November 25, 2015

Norway should meet Russia for political talks

Member of Parliament, Kåre Simensen, says it is time to arrange bilateral meetings on high-level with Russia. Our faces have been turned away from each other too long now, he argues.
November 25, 2015

Statoil takes a second year Barents Sea break

Norway’s oil major returns to Arctic waters at the earliest in 2017.
November 24, 2015

Murmansk NGOs open for unionizing idea

Nongovernmental organisations, including those stamped as Foreign Agents, plan to create union helping each other and being a channel for dialog with Russian authorities.
November 24, 2015

Rusal considers closing aluminium factory on Kola peninsula

Suffering weak prices and a global oversupply, the world's top aluminium producer Rusal plans to decide in mid-December which smelters to suspend. 1000 workers in Kandalaksha on the Kola peninsula could lose their jobs.
November 24, 2015

Belokamenka left Kola Bay

Has served as Floating Storage and Offloading vessel for Arctic oil for more than a decade.
November 23, 2015

Russia inspects Norway from the air

Russian inspectors embark today on an inspection flight over Norwegian territory as part of the Open Skies Treaty.
November 23, 2015

Less asylum-seekers on Arctic Route, but still many children

This Afghan girl is one of more than 1,000 children that have entered Norway at Storskog on bicycle.
November 23, 2015

Sun sets on Europe’s far north

This week, the sun goes down for the last time this year for Troms and Finnmark counties and is not back again until late January.
November 22, 2015

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Thomas Nilsen is editor of the Barents Observer. 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 Russia and the Arctic. 

Thomas has been traveling extensively across northern Scandinavia and Arctic Russia since the late 80’s working for different media and NGOs. He has also been a guide at sea and in remote locations in the Russian north for various groups and regularly lectures on security, environment and Russia’s repressive influence operations.

In 2017, FSB declared Thomas Nilsen persona non grata (PNG) and since 2019 the censorship agency Roscomnadzor has attempted to block the Barents Observer from the Russian internet.

Thomas Nilsen studied at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology.

Mobile: +47-90573143

thomas@thebarentsobserver.com
@nilsen.thomas