MOSCOW: Western countries are trying to draw the demilitarized Svalbard into a kind of "battle for the Arctic," Russian ambassad...
MOSCOW: Western countries are trying to draw the demilitarized Svalbard into a kind of "battle for the Arctic," Russian ambassador to Norway Nikolay Korchunov said in an interview with TASS.
"Attempts to draw the demilitarized Svalbard into a kind of 'battle for the Arctic' are being made not by us, but exclusively by Western countries," the diplomat said.
He said that not so long ago, Croatian President Zoran Milanovic "for no reason at all suggested that [US President] Donald Trump pay attention to the Norwegian archipelago instead of Greenland, which caused, to put it mildly, bewilderment with Oslo. Before that, back in the fall of 2024, head of the German intelligence service (BND) Bruno Kahl invented a threat of a Russian ‘attack’ on Svalbard to 'test article 5 of the NATO Washington Treaty on Collective Defense'.
"Such a ridiculous fantasy sounds especially hypocritical coming from a Berlin representative. Let me remind you that it was Nazi Germany that, since the signing of the Svalbard Treaty in 1920, was the only country that during the WWII grossly violating Norwegian sovereignty, transferred the hostilities to the archipelago, which led to human casualties and significant destruction of the infrastructure of the settlements located there.
"Our country has been carefully developing the archipelago for centuries and has never questioned either Norway's sovereignty or the need for international cooperation based on full and consistent compliance with the 1920 Treaty. We believe that maintaining the Russian presence in Svalbard in accordance with the special legal regime in force there is also in the interests of Oslo."
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