Spitsbergen sovereignty

Norwegian newspaper Dagsavisen has published my argument that in the fast-moving escalation of the crisis around Ukraine, Moscow could try to exploit Norwegian sensitivity to the Spitsbergen sovereignty. I certainly do not want to give the policy-makers in the Kremlin ideas, but the pressure point is too obvious to miss. It fits perfectly into the attempts to split the unity of NATO – and it answers to the desire to exploit Russia’s military superiority in the High North demonstrated in the recent exercises involving deployment of VDV troops in the North Pole.