Norway's Minister of Justice and Public Security, Emily Enger Mell, said late last week to Norway's state-run broadcaster Ener Co (NRK) that her government could to erect a high-tech fence along its entire Arctic border with Russia, or at least part of it. The step will be taken on the example of neighboring Finland, noted the Associated Press.
Four days later, on October 1, Russian President Vladimir Putin replaced the country's ambassador to Norway, replacing Teimuraz Ramishvili with Nikolay Korchunov, TASS reported. The new head of Moscow's diplomatic mission in the kingdom was Ambassador-at-Large of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and chairman of the Committee of Senior Officials of the Arctic Council. He monitored and coordinated international cooperation in the Arctic, TASS points out.
It was Korchunov who, at the beginning of March of this year, stated that the scale of the military activity of the USA and other NATO member countries in the Arctic is growing. "Intensification of US and other NATO military activities in the Arctic and in other non-Arctic regions continues. Their potential is increasing in the northern latitudes, as well as the scale of the exercises conducted there," said Korchunov, quoted by Reuters, at a plenary session during the scientific-practical conference "The Far East and the Arctic: Sustainable Development".
In the Norwegian-led NATO exercise "Northern Response" 13 countries participated. It took place in the first half of March on the territories of Norway, Sweden and Finland. The three Scandinavian countries, along with the USA and Russia, are members of the Arctic Council.
What is the Arctic Council
In addition to being the first to erect a fence along its border with Russia, Finland is also the initiator of the Arctic Council – an international regional organization with the aim of protecting the environment and ensuring the development of the northern polar and subpolar regions. In September 1989, the government of Finland organized an official meeting in the city of Rovaniemi between the eight Arctic countries (with territories beyond the Arctic Circle), at which measures to protect the nature of the Arctic space were discussed.
The meeting in Rovaniemi was followed by meetings in Yellowknife (Canada) in April 1990 and in Kiruna (Sweden) in January 1991. In June 1991 there was another meeting in Rovaniemi where an Environmental Strategy was adopted arctic environment. The founding forum was on September 19, 1996 in Ottawa (Canada), where a declaration was signed on the establishment of the Arctic Council. It includes Canada, the USA, Iceland, Norway, Finland, Sweden, Russia and Denmark, whose territory is Greenland.
The chairmanship of the Arctic Council, like that of the EU and the G-7, is on a rotating basis. At the moment, the presidency belongs to Norway, which took over from Russia, which held the presidency between 2021 and 2023. It was during this period that Moscow began its invasion of Ukraine – on February 24, 2022
Following the invasion of Russian troops into the neighboring country, two Arctic Council countries that maintained long-standing military neutrality – Finland and Sweden joined NATO. They did it in April last year and in March this year respectively.
The Norwegian border fence project
The border between Russia and Norway is 198 kilometers long, far beyond the Arctic Circle. It outlines from the east the area (fülke) of Finnmark – "Norwegian Far East". It is both the largest in terms of territory (nearly 49,000 sq. km) and the last most populated (just over 75,000 people) administrative unit in the kingdom.
"The border fence project is very interesting because it is high-tech in itself. Sensors will be built in that detect the movement of people at a certain distance from the fence, not just right next to it. And this could become a reality in Norway,“, Mel explained to EN Air Co last Thursday.
In parallel with the construction of the fence, the intentions of the rulers are to increase the number of border guards and to strengthen surveillance, the minister added. Mel was impressed by the fence erected along the Finnish border during her visit to the neighboring Scandinavian country this summer, reports EN.
According to the researcher from the institute "Fritjof Nansen“ Arild Mø, quoted by state television, said Norway's border fence should be better fortified than Finland's because it is at the edge of a territory with a “significant concentration of Russian military personnel” with their adjacent combat equipment.
"A significant movement of Russian units is observed there and accordingly it is an extremely secret military zone. On the other hand, the Russian authorities do not control the flow of migrants through this area at all,“, notes Mew.
Under the sign of the refugee crisis in "Storskog“
The police chief of the Finnmark district – Elen Katrine Heta testified to the state television her support for the project presented by Mel. "I think that there must be a fence at certain places along the border. We are yet to specify which sections are the most urgent in this regard”, Heta states.
"I am convinced that this fence will deter people who want to cross illegally from Russia to Norway or vice versa. In principle, illegal crossing of the Norwegian-Russian border is rare, although in August our border services suspected that there had been illegal entry into Russia, Heta also said.
EN Co points out that last year police reported three illegal crossings from Norway to Russia since the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022. The most famous case of illegal entry into Norway was from January 2023 with the defector a Russian commander from the mercenary private military company "Wagner“ Andrei Medvedev, who is believed to have crossed the border in a white coat, pointed to EN Air Co.
The border checkpoint "Storskog“ is the only official entry from Russia into Norway through which illegal crossings are not common. This was not the case in 2015, a year that remained in the police reports in Norway as the "refugee crisis from “Storskog. Then about 5,000 asylum-seeking migrants enter from Russian territory. A year earlier, Moscow's forces had annexed Ukraine's Crimean peninsula.
Due to the influx of migrants since 2015, a fence 200 meters long and 3.5 meters high was erected in the area of the border post the following year. These measures lead to a sharp reaction from the Russian embassy in Oslo.
"We don't understand why you are erecting this fence,” said the Russian diplomatic mission in Norway in a statement at the time, which noted that the best solution to the security issue on the border between Russia and the region was through "dialogue and cooperation, not by erecting fences“.