Thomas Nilsen

€730,000 Barents fund launched to strengthen cooperation, including democracy, grassroots and media freedom

In times of growing east-west tensions, a new door opens to finance practical projects between Europe’s northernmost countries and Russia.
January 28, 2022

Northern Fleet stages war games to protect Arctic shipping

The Barents Sea naval exercise will train coordinated combat actions between ships, submarines, aircraft, air defense units and garrisons of Russia’s largest fleet.
January 26, 2022

Russian warships steam from Arctic storm to exercise in Irish waters

As fears grow about a military conflict in Ukraine and escalating security turmoil in Europe, three of the largest navy ships in Russia’s Northern Fleet are currently sailing outside northern Norway on their way to war games southwest of Ireland.
January 25, 2022

Amid record Covid-19 cases in both countries, Norway ends mandatory entry quarantine for travelers from Russia

Cross-border shopping and leisure travel could again get a boost after nearly two years of practically closed border for normal people between Russia and Norway in the north.
January 25, 2022

Russian Arctic stocks tumble as investors fear Ukraine conflict

Geopolitical tensions scare investors at Moscow’s stock exchange Monday. Big businesses with most of their income from oil, gas and metals in the Russian north take a hard hit.
January 24, 2022

Major disaster averted in icy Kara Sea after two oil barges ran aground

Russia’s Marine Rescue Service describes the unprecedented salvage operation as "extremely difficult" as ice was rapidly building up on the structures of the barges in the freezing cold polar night. The environmental group Bellona now calls on a ban on transporting fuel oil during icy Arctic winter months.
January 23, 2022

Lapland-Russia border travel down 97% from pre-Covid times

With 2021 dominated by pandemic-related travel restrictions, the number of people across the two northernmost checkpoints on Finland’s border to the Kola Peninsula reached record lows.
January 23, 2022

Northern Fleet exercise area overlaps into Norway's EEZ amid Europe tensions

Notice to Airmen (NOTAM) alert warnings show the scoop of actions with naval weapons in the Barents Sea for the coming few days as all four Russian fleets will hold series of exercises involving 140 combat and supply ships.
January 21, 2022

Significant metals discovery in key reindeer herding land

"Green colonialism" could ruin indigenous peoples’ traditional lifestyle, warns Gunn-Britt Retter with the Saami Council as Arctic Minerals this week announced big-value findings of cobalt and tellurium, metals important for batteries to electric vehicles, at Bidjovagge, northern Norway.
January 19, 2022

Putin instructs government to get new Barents Sea rail link back on track

Still unclear who will possibly pay for the 500 kilometers long railway from Karpogory in Arkhangelsk region to the not-yet-built port in Indiga on the eastern coast of the Barents Sea.
January 17, 2022

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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.

Mobile: +47-90573143

thomas@thebarentsobserver.com
@nilsen.thomas