The war in Ukraine and the NATO membership process in Finland and Sweden feed tensions in the Far North. The activities of the Arctic Council have been suspended since the beginning of the conflict.
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Until the triggering of the war in Ukraine, the Baltic and the Arctic remained areas of relatively secondary interests for most Western staffs. But as the shock wave of the conflict stretches, the Far North – of which Russia is one of the main residents – is increasingly a possible overflow region. A “volatile zone” sums up a French officer. In particular since the start of the NATO membership process in Finland and Sweden, at the end of June.
Monday, August 15, Russia accused a British RC-135 RC-135 spy plane of having violated its airspace near Mourmansk, where the North Fleet of the Russian Military Navy is based, and dispatched a MIG-31 interceptor to hunt it. An event qualified as “deliberate provocation” by Moscow but denied by London.
Vigilance had already been reinforced, after the holding, on July 31, of the traditional Russian Navy Festival, as every year on Neva, in Saint Petersburg, a hometown of Vladimir Putin located on the banks of the Baltic. This great military parade is often the occasion for procedural demonstrations on the part of Moscow even if, this year, part of the festivities which were to take place in Sébastopol, in Crimea, seat of the Black Sea fleet, was canceled because of the war.
While the United Kingdom was the first country, at the end of March, to announce a “new strategy” for the Far North, the Royal Navy practiced to follow, on July 16 and 19, two submarines Russians going to this parade along the Norwegian coast. A presence that she was beautiful to reveal when they surfaced, just opposite Bergen, very close to the main base of the Norwegian royal navy, the largest in the Nordic countries.
One of these buildings, a nuclear submarine launcher (SNLE), the Severodvinsk, was identified as that which carried out a test in the Barent Sea, in the fall of 2021, of a new Dreaded cruise missile, presented as “hypersonic” by the Russians, and baptized the Tsirkon. For the Severodvinsk and the submarine which accompanied him, both with nuclear and class Iassen propulsion, it was their first journey towards the Baltic, according to the Barents site observing.
activities suspended from the Arctic Council
This cat and mouse game between Russians and Westerners has been recurrent for several years in the cold waters of the Arctic and the Baltic. Number of Russian planes flirt with the air identification area of riparian countries. Russia also performs missile tests without necessarily respecting notice measures to avoid accidents.
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