Norway’s defence minister, Tore Sandvik, recently warned that Russia must not be allowed to control the Bear Gap. This is a stretch of water that runs roughly 400 miles between Bear Island in the southernmost portion of the Svalbard archipelago and Cape North on Norway’s northern mainland. It serves as the geographical boundary point where the shallow Barents Sea meets the much deeper Norwegian Sea.
Russia has long sought to control the Bear Gap. Control of the waterway would give Russian submarines easier access to the Norwegian Sea, where complex acoustic conditions make detection much harder for Nato forces. From there, Sandvik warned these submarines would be able to threaten Nato countries such as the UK and Denmark directly with hypersonic missiles, which have an operational range of up to 1,500km.
