Tracking data for balloons released by the Finnish Meteorological Institute in Sodankylä have been lost several times, jeopardizing weather forecasts for northern regions.
"Our services came and picked them up,” a receptionist with the motel in Kandalaksha said when called by the Barents Observer on Tuesday. A few hours later, 41 migrants crossed the border to Finish Lapland at Salla checkpoint.
State-controlled news agency TASS reports the number of Yasen-class submarines to increase from nine to a total of 12, of which half will be based on the coast to the Barents Sea.
Tensions are increasing as FSB again sends migrants across its northern checkpoint with Europe. A group of 35 asylum seekers came to Salla in Finnish Lapland on Monday. Norway says it is on alert.
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.