“Barentsburg welcomes you” read the white letters in Russian above the dock. From the moment visitors step off the boat, there is little doubt who is at least symbolically in charge of this small town of a few hundred in the middle of the Arctic Ocean. Russian flags fly from buildings. The local pub, the Red Bear, charges punters in roubles. A bust of Lenin looks out across the fjord, behind it a monument declaring: “Our goal is communism!”
Yet this is not Russia, but Norway. The mining town may have been owned by the Soviet Union (and subsequently, Russia) since 1932, but it is located on the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard, which is resolutely Norwegian. Under a treaty drawn up in 1920, the Norwegian government has “full and absolute sovereignty” of Svalbard in return for equal rights of abode to citizens of signatory countries, including Russia.
Until recently, the mostly Russian and Ukrainian residents of Barentsburg have had remarkably warm relations with their predominantly Norwegian Arctic neighbours along the coast in the settlement of Longyearbyen. There were regular cultural exchanges, with visiting symphony orchestras and children’s choirs, chess competitions and sport fixtures.
But since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine the two communities have found themselves on the edge of the west’s last remaining interaction point with Russia. And the mood has turned decidedly icy.
On 9 May, the day celebrated in Russia as a commemoration of the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany, the Russian general consul, Andrei Chemerilo, led a parade of dozens of vehicles and a helicopter bearing Russian flags. In another parade in the abandoned Soviet coal mining settlement of Pyramiden, a bulldozer was photographed flying the separatist flag of the “Donetsk People’s Republic”. A few months later, in July, Russian officials conducted a Navy Day Parade with a small flotilla of boats in Norwegian waters.
To Russia’s critics, this looks a lot like propaganda demonstrating Russian dominance in the High Arctic; military posturing on a strategically important landmass belonging to a founding member of Nato.
Russian authorities dismiss this, saying such events are traditional. But Terje Aunevik, group leader for Norway’s Liberal party in the local council, says Russia has dramatically ramped up nationalistic activities. 9 May in Barentsburg used to be a friendly “people-to-people happening every year”, with gifts, speeches and music. But now, he says, “it is a weird happening with flags and helicopters. I’ve never seen that for the 25 years I’ve been here.”
Visit Svalbard, the official tourism board, no longer promotes travel to either of the Russian settlements, and most Norwegian tourism operators have stopped going there entirely because of Russia’s invasion. Visit Svalbard has described the Barentsburg tourism company Arctic Travel Company Grumant, owned by mining company Trust Arktikugol, as “an extended arm of the Russian state”.
For those who go ahead and visit Barentsburg anyway, Longyearbyen residents often advise turning phones and laptops off to avoid potential Russian surveillance.
Ronny Brunvoll, Visit Svalbard’s CEO, says it is impossible to predict when relations between the two communities will heal. “One, the war obviously has to stop,” he says, shoeless in his office, as is tradition, to avoid bringing in the coal dust from outside. “But the process after that, we can’t predict that.”
‘People regarded Svalbard as a safe haven’
Around Barentsburg’s quiet main street, Soviet-era murals decorate walls and employees rush to buy imported food before the only grocery shop closes. But in among these idiosyncrasies, modern life goes on.
Music plays from apartment windows and young women jovially greet one another in Russian as they pass. One says she came here to “get away”. While not entirely free to speak her mind without risking her job – nearly all residents are employees of the Russian state-owned Trust Arktikugol – she says she is much more able to do so than at home.
For many people, however, this is far less of a haven than it used to be. Since the poisoning of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, and later Vladimir Putin’s invasion, many Ukrainians and Russians have left Barentsburg for the mainland, Europe or Longyearbyen.
Ivan Velichenko, 36, loved his job as one of the only Ukrainians working in the Russian tourism office in Barentsburg. But he ended up leaving for Longyearbyen during a mass walkout of his Russian colleagues after they came under pressure for protesting against the Navalny poisoning.
Since leaving, Velichenko has helped multiple Ukrainians leave Barentsburg and seek asylum in Europe. After the outbreak of war, he says, “a lot of people started to leave because they could not stand it”.
There are still Ukrainians living there, he says, but that those who remain are probably pro-Russian. Traditionally, large numbers of the miners there came from Luhansk and Donetsk, which were illegally annexed by Russia last year.
Since the invasion, Russian authorities in Barentsburg have started “showing that they don’t care, that they’re living under their own rules, as well as starting to brag a lot,” Velichenko says. “They just like to show their loyalty to the government.”
The Ukrainian says he felt the change starkly when he returned after eight months helping to defend his home city of Chernihiv, 150km north of Kyiv. He had wanted to show his mother his former home and workplace, he says, but when the pair arrived in Barentsburg they were greeted by a consulate representative who followed and filmed them around the town.
Andrian Vlakhov, a social anthropologist in Moscow who has spent years studying the population of Barentsburg, says that since 2014, when Russia annexed Crimea, many residents – both Ukrainian and Russian – have had to choose between speaking out and keeping their jobs.
“People regarded Svalbard as a safe haven because they didn’t have anything to return to, and for many people it’s the case now,” he says. Often, he adds, Ukrainians’ homes have been demolished.
‘This is Norway, this is Norwegian soil’
In his office in Longyearbyen overlooking the fjord, a portrait of the Norwegian King and Queen behind his desk, Svalbard governor Lars Fause is keen to assert that in his royal-appointed position he is not a political figure. He is, he says, “an ordinary guy doing [my] orders from Oslo”.
“My task is to take care of the peace and stability of the archipelago,” he says, adding that the tone between him and Russian authorities in Barentsburg is “friendly and constructive”.
They do not discuss the war, he says. Security policy is “between Norway, Europe and Russia. Not between Svalbard and the Russians,” he says.
Analysts say Oslo appears to be taking steps to tighten its grip over the archipelago. Many are eagerly awaiting the next Svalbard white paper, released by the Norwegian government every 10 years, for more clues of its plans for the region, expected in the spring.
“It’s quite obvious it’s going more and more towards different kinds of control and there’s a desire to make it more Norwegian and to limit some of the non-Norwegians,” says Dina Brode-Roger, a research fellow at KU Leuven studying the community of Longyearbyen, sitting in a “husky cafe” in the town.
Fause predicts that the future for Russia in Svalbard will probably focus on tourism rather than mining, while for Oslo the emphasis will be on increasing the Norwegian population of Svalbard (which costs the government about 1.3bn NOK a year to run), as well as the climate crisis and energy supply.
“Politicians want a Norwegian community here,” he says. “This is Norway, this is Norwegian soil and when you have to pay such a large amount of money [to subsidise Svalbard communities] it’s fair to want the Norwegians to live in Svalbard.”
Trust Arktikugol declined to comment.
