This week, “Norwegian security services had been tracking a Russian research ship. It was cruising around Svalbard, an icy archipelago high in the Arctic near the North Pole that Norway controls but is governed by a one-of-a-kind treaty that gives the Russians access. On Wednesday, the Norwegians pounced,” the New York Times reports:
Armed with a court order that is part of a global effort to recover Russian assets, Norwegian police officers boarded the ship while it was docked in Barentsburg, a tiny Russian outpost in Svalbard. The officers confronted the captain of the ship, a somewhat clunky, 200-foot-long oceanographic vessel, and announced that they were “arresting” it.
The ship was seized as part of an effort to enforce an international court judgment ordering Russia to pay a Ukrainian energy company more than $4 billion for seizing that company’s assets in a Russian-occupied region of Ukraine, Crimea. “The ship, owned by the Russian government and called Professor Molchanov, after a famous Russian scientist, is now prohibited from leaving Barentsburg until Norwegian courts decide what to do next.”
This is the first time Norway has taken action against a Russian ship in Svalbard. “The Russians quickly denounced it, with the foreign ministry spokeswoman calling it “piracy.” But the bold move fits neatly with the shifting geopolitics in this part of the Arctic and Norway’s increasingly aggressive stance,” The Times says.
“For years, Svalbard was a collegial place, remote and often bone-chillingly cold. But it was one where Russians, Norwegians and people from all over the world went snowmobiling together, scouted polar bears and slurped borscht at chess tournaments.”
Several professors familiar with Svalbard said the Russian ship “was a well-known propaganda tool and that for years it had been ferrying Russian agents to Svalbard who then raised Russian flags and boosted Russian claims to the archipelago, in addition to performing surveillance.”
Although Russia has complained about the seizure of this ship, it is silent when other countries’ ships are seized by nearby countries in key shipping lanes, such as when Yemen’s Houthis seized a Japanese ship in the Red Sea. Over a trillion dollars worth of goods pass through the Red Sea every year, generally on their way to or from Europe.
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