Boštjan Videmšek
Far from Oslo, yet central to NATO, Kirkenes shows how global events have affected a small, remote port
Words and photographs by Boštjan Videmšek
A decade ago, Kirkenes was a bustling duty-free border town in northern Norway. Russians streamed across one of the few open crossings to the West to shop and to do business. Norwegians headed in the other direction to party on cheap booze. Russian ships came to be repaired in the many docks and football and ice hockey teams played one another. There were even high-level talks on creating a ‘transnational’ free town. But that all came to an abrupt end when Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022.
Today, there’s an atmosphere of grim suspicion, accusations of ‘hybrid’ warfare and sabotage to key infrastructure, and a growing fear of the vast Russian military presence just across the nearly 200-kilometre border on the Kola Peninsula.
Standing next to a statue commemorating the Russian liberation of the town from Nazi occupiers in 1944, retired doctor Harald Sunde said: ‘The invasion was a huge shock. The Russian attack destroyed all trust. After three decades of trying to build a friendly community, we now have a hostile regime across the border. The damage caused by the severing of ties is incalculable.’
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Sunde is the author of two books on Norwegian partisans during the Second World War. When the long- standing Russian foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, visited Kirkenes in 2019, Sunde presented him with a copy of one of the books. They shook hands. Soon afterwards, he received a special commendation from the Russian Ministry of Defence. A week after the full Russian invasion of Ukraine, Sunde visited the Russian consulate in the town and gave it back.
The ties to Russia date back a long way. Before the border of the modern states of Russia and Norway was formally established in 1826, Indigenous Sámi people freely travelled and established what was called the Pomor trade in the region – a barter system for fish and wheat that reached a peak during the Napoleonic wars. Kirkenes was founded in 1862 as a fishing village, and its population quickly grew to more than 8,000 residents of Norwegian, Russian and Sámi origins after iron ore was discovered in the early 20th century.
The town was nearly completely destroyed by extensive bombing during the Second World War before the Red Army liberated it in October 1944.
During the Cold War, the monument to fallen Soviet soldiers in Kirkenes served as a strong link in Norway’s relations with the Soviet Union. On both sides of the border, the period was dubbed ‘the Arctic peace’. Cross- border co-operation boomed. As we stood in the fresh spring air, Sunde pointed out a van painted in the yellow and blue colours of Ukraine parked nearby.
He escorted me to a plaque a few streets away in memory of the murdered opposition leader, Alexei Navalny, just metres from the Russian consulate building. Nearly every house or building we passed displayed the Ukrainian flag.
The Russian aggression in Ukraine has had a direct impact on the town, which, following the collapse of the Soviet Union, had become increasingly dependent on Russia. Mining in the region had petered out and Russian tourism and Russia’s use of the town’s dockyards had become the main source of income for the 3,500 remaining residents.
‘Before the invasion, Kirkenes was an important shopping centre for middle-class Russians living in towns near the border,’ 67-year-old Sunde told me. ‘Afterwards, many business deals were halted, many of them permanently. I had expected the Oslo authorities to help more, given the severity of the crisis for the town.’
Last year, at a conference on the future of the town, the mayor of the local authority, Magnus Mæland, told the delegates: ‘Our trust in Russia has been dealt a substantial blow. Kirkenes aims to provide a safe harbour for those who want democracy and freedom.’
Jonas Gahr Støre, the Norwegian prime minister, was even more direct. His opinion was that the situation in the region was at its most serious since the Second World War. ‘We must be prepared for war eventually reaching Norway, though there is no immediate threat,’ he told the conference.
This summer, Mæland hung a large rainbow flag from the front of the Kirkenes town hall building for the LGBTQ+ Pride parade. Less than 100 metres away, at the Russian consulate, hangs the Russian tricolour flag. This is probably the only place in the world where the two flags have found themselves in such proximity.
‘When we were putting out the rainbow flag, I took to pondering how we were living at the border between a totalitarian regime and an open democratic society,’ the 41-year-old conservative mayor told me in his spacious office in downtown Kirkenes. Mæland became mayor during the autumn of 2023. Since then, he hasn’t had any direct contact with the Russian consul general in Kirkenes, Nikolay Konyigin. Official relations have been completely severed.
‘Right after the invasion, the consul general started spreading the most extreme forms of Russian propaganda: how Russia was really fighting Nazis; how everyone in the West has turned Nazi; how this was the continuation of the Second World War,’ Mæland told me.
In his view, the invasion came as a huge shock to the entire region, and especially Kirkenes. Yet he also believes that his constituents were quick to accept the new reality, relations between the two border communities having already begun to deteriorate after the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014.
‘Putin’s regime played us for fools,’ Mæland said. ‘Europe proved incredibly naive. Over here, we’ve seen 31 years of close collaboration with Russia. We are a border town. We are interlocked with our neighbours. Many of the people here were hurt. Now all trust is gone.
‘Kirkenes is a geopolitical hotspot. It is true that we share with Russia a much shorter border than Finland or Sweden. Our border, however, is located by the Barents Sea and the Kola Peninsula, where Russia has enormous nuclear capabilities. The entire area is a Russian fortress.’
Mæland explained that Kirkenes lies 15 minutes from the Russian border and a mere 30-minute drive from the Pechenga Valley, where the 200th Separate Motorised Rifle Brigade of the Russian army is stationed – a unit that has experienced heavy casualties in Ukraine. ‘
Two more hours of driving and you reach Severomorsk, the seat of the Russian Northern Fleet, also comprising submarines with strategic nuclear weapons,’ he added. ‘And then only 30 kilometres from there, you have the Olenya airbase.’
I asked Mæland whether he felt safe, given what he had just told me. ‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘Our security- intelligence services know exactly what’s going on. The same goes for the police. The Norwegian army is extremely competent. We’re in control. At the same time, we are the eyes and ears of NATO. We are important to the European Union and the United States. The nuclear weapons on the other side of the border have never been pointed at Norway.’
Mæland added that the Arctic has become the new battleground for the superpowers. There are many reasons: climate change enabling new trade routes, the Arctic’s plentiful natural resources (oil, natural gas, rare metals and minerals, fish), and the region is rapidly becoming a significant source of renewable wind energy.
Bjarge Schwenke Fors is the head of the Barents Institute in Kirkenes, a local research organisation linked to the Arctic University of Norway in Tromsø. We met at the institute’s offices in Kirkenes.
He told me: ‘My fear is that we will not be able to return to the pre-invasion state anytime soon. It will take several generations. What is certain is that the relations here have entered a new epoch. Recovery is bound to be difficult. In several ways, the two communities remain closely connected. Kirkenes is home to many Russians, who are an important part of the community. Just like during the Cold War, when the relationship was prone to a lot of oscillation. But back then, things at least used to be fairly predictable. These days, there is only complete uncertainty.’
For Schwenke Fors, the project of forging a common identity in the Barents Sea region, so popular after the Cold War ended, is now completely dead. Kirkenes lies in Norway’s second-largest and least-populated province, Finnmark. The town was once owned by the private mining company working the iron reserves. At its height, the mine employed 1,500 workers. High production costs and cheaper global supplies of iron ore led to its collapse in the 1980s. A severe demographic decline followed.
The situation changed after the fall of the Soviet Union. For a few years, the residents of Kirkenes and the Russian town of Nikel were allowed to travel up to 30 kilometres into their respective neighbouring countries, with only a border pass. Kirkenes’ duty-free status meant that numerous Russian ships began docking at the town’s port, bringing a steady inflow of business.
During the first half of the 1990s, a steady two- way traffic was established between Kirkenes and Murmansk. Russian citizens frequently visited the Norwegian side of the border because they could purchase goods not available in their homeland. The Norwegians, on the other hand, liked visiting the Russian side for alcohol-fuelled parties.
In the years immediately after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Russian side of the border was in chaos. A privatisation free-for-all was taking place.
Criminal syndicates took control of Murmansk and many smaller towns. Industrial pollution was out of control, much of it caused by the mishandling of nuclear waste. Near the end of the 1980s, the Kola Peninsula hosted about 20 per cent of the globe’s nuclear reactors. Disused nuclear fuel was repeatedly dumped into the Barents Sea.
As Putin consolidated his power in Russia, the Arctic increasingly became a key geopolitical chessboard. The Russian pressure on the region intensified with each year. After 2005, Russia began reopening more than 50 old Soviet military bases on the Kola Peninsula.
At least 1,000 nuclear warheads – Russia’s second-largest nuclear arsenal – are now believed to be located in the region. The Kola Peninsula also hosts hypersonic rocket-firing ranges and the world’s largest icebreaker fleet. Russia’s most important strategic resource in the Barents Sea is its nuclear submarines. Each one can carry 16 ballistic rockets with nuclear warheads.
The land border between Norway and Russia is 195.7 kilometres long, the sea border is 23.2 kilometres. The only land crossing station is located at Storskog, some ten kilometres from Kirkenes.
The Storskog border crossing gained international prominence between 2015 and 2016, when several thousand refugees and asylum seekers, predominantly Syrian citizens, used it to enter Norway from Russia, arriving on bicycles and in wheelchairs.
Crossing the border on foot had been barred. This was seen by some as a Russian ‘political game’ or ‘hybrid warfare’ to test Norway and create problems.
Kirkenes has now become a testing ground for Russia’s hybrid warfare against the West. Civilian aircraft flying into Kirkenes no longer use GPS due to constant Russian jamming, and there has been a fivefold increase in GPS failure days over Finnmark since 2022.
Russian fishing vessels are still allowed to dock in the town, but are coming under increasing suspicion of intelligence gathering and sabotage. Norwegian authorities have discovered hidden surveillance equipment on these vessels. The Russian General Consulate in Kirkenes and its employees have also been linked to the FSB – the successor to the Soviet KGB.
Kirkenes and the High North have been targets for hacking, drone activities and human-agent espionage.
‘The Arctic is witnessing the consequences of the aggression in Ukraine. Russia is actively promoting a narrative of NATO militarisation of the Arctic and has for several years been bolstering its Arctic military positions, opening new outposts and upgrading old ones,’ I was told by Kari Aga Myklebost, professor of Russian history at the Arctic University of Norway.
According to her, Russia has increased its efforts to create a hostile image of the West from 2022 onwards. By flying Soviet flags and cobbling together military parades at the Russian settlements in the relatively nearby Norwegian Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and in the Barents Sea, Russia is trying to force Norway to react.
‘The incidence of Russian symbolic activity rose sharply after the full-scale attack on Ukraine,’ she said. ‘Russia stepped up its public commemoration of 9 May as Victory Day, placing a further emphasis on its legacy from World War Two, while also glorifying the current war in Ukraine. This is Russia’s current mode of hybrid operations in Svalbard.
The aim is to provoke a reaction by forwarding revanchist symbols, as a sharp reaction would open up for accusing Norway of discrimination against the Russian population.’
In her opinion, Norway plays an important role in Russia’s long-term plans. ‘As a small country bordering the strategically important Kola Peninsula and the adjacent Barents Sea, Norway is rightly very cautious. The balance of power is extremely asymmetric, and these regions are of high military–strategic importance to Russia. Norway is well aware that Russia could potentially start mounting pressure concerning the Svalbard archipelago.’
War commemorations such as Russian Victory Day, which used to be celebrated jointly by Norway and Russia in Kirkenes, have become controversial. According to Myklebost, Moscow – through its continued war commemorations – keeps up a narrative of cross-border unity in fighting German Nazism as well as Neo-Nazism in Ukraine today. ‘And this is done even though many Kirkenes residents have very clearly expressed their disapproval of Russian commemorations trying to establish a link with the war in Ukraine. The Russian consulate simply continues with its provocations.’
Around 600 Russian nationals still live in Kirkenes. Many fled conscription or repression. Journalists, LGBTQ+ activists and academics now live quietly among Norwegians who welcome their dissent. However, not all Russian residents oppose the Kremlin. Some remain loyal to Moscow and echo Russian state narratives. ‘There’s tension,’ says a local café owner. ‘People look over their shoulders more than they used to.’
As one of the leading authorities on Arctic geopolitics, Myklebost is convinced that Kirkenes itself doesn’t hold a very high strategic value for Norway, even if it is of importance to NATO due to the proximity to Russia. Whereas for Russia, the case couldn’t be more different.
‘Both Svalbard and the Barents Sea are of exceeding importance to Russia. In case of conflict between Russia and NATO, Russia would need control over the eastern part of the Finnmark province as well as the Barents Sea to secure its strategic capabilities on the Kola Peninsula and free access for its Northern Fleet into the Atlantic Ocean. This would also involve control of Kirkenes, Svalbard and the western part of the Barents Sea. The key aims would be to secure the Kola Peninsula’s nuclear capabilities and grant free navigation to the Russian Northern Fleet.’
The Norwegian intelligence services are thought to be increasingly concerned by the current US political position, as well as by President Trump cosying up to Russia and setting his sights on the acquisition of Greenland. The north of Norway has been caught in the middle of a geopolitical upheaval.
‘Norway is adapting to changed circumstances. On the one side, we have a very determined Russia, and on the other, the extremely unpredictable American administration.
In this context, the Norwegian government announced in May that it intends to soften the restrictions imposed on its allies 70 years ago, concerning activities in the areas bordering on Russia. This is a huge change, as the restrictions were partly intended as a message to Russia,’ Myklebost explained.
Like Finland and Sweden, Norway has been bolstering its national defensive capacities with the aim of containing Russia. ‘This is the reality. For the time being, we are simply not able to plan our future relations with Russia. The situation is much too unpredictable.’
Another key factor adding to the growing tensions across the Arctic is climate change.
Over the past four decades, each decade, on average, saw the melting of 13 per cent of summer ice. At this rate, the Arctic might be rendered ice-free by 2040. The melting of the ice is already opening up new trade routes. Very soon, the Northern Sea Route will be open throughout the year.
Kirkenes embodies the paradox of the Arctic: isolation and centrality. It is far from Oslo, yet vital to NATO. It is shrinking demographically, yet growing in strategic importance. For decades, the town served as a hopeful model of post-Cold War co-operation. Today, it’s a cautionary tale – a reminder that even the smallest communities aren’t immune to the world’s biggest fractures.
Whether Kirkenes can again become a place of peace depends not just on politics, but on memory, identity and the slow, often painful work of reconciliation. And for now, at least, the flags across the street from each other – rainbow and Russian tricolour – seem to say everything.
