In Russia, Molotov cocktails continue to be thrown at military recruitment offices. This weekend in the town of Suojarvi in Karelia, some 80 km from the border with Finland.
With 60 square kilometers, about the size of Manhattan, and a coastline of five kilometers, the unique faraway property on Svalbard is a geopolitical hotspot in a warming Arctic.
Professor emeritus Lassi Heininen was dismissed from his contract with the University of Lapland in Rovaniemi after it became known that he went to Moscow for the Far East, Arctic Conference 2024.
"How does it feel to mark Victory Day as you know your country is attacking a neighboring peaceful country in Europe with cruise missiles?" - The Barents Observer asked the Russian General Consul in Kirkenes.
“…the situation is difficult. My own people want to nullify me, to shoot me,” the desperate soldier says in a video he sent home from his mobile phone.
Thomas Nilsen is editor of the Independent Barents Observer with its news desk located in Kirkenes, northern Norway. He has a long experience in media cooperation across the borders in the high north of Europe, both as radio- and newspaper reporter all the way back to the days before the breakup of the Soviet Union.
Nilsen has been editor of Barents Observer since 2009.
He was Deputy Head of the Norwegian Barents Secretariat from 2004-2009. Until 2003, he worked 12 years for the Bellona Foundation’s Russian study group, focusing on nuclear safety issues and general environmental challenges in northern areas and the Arctic.
Thomas has been traveling extensively across northern Scandinavia and Arctic Russia since the late 80’s working for different media and organizations. He is also a guide at sea and in remote locations in the Russian north for various groups and regularly lectures on security issues, environmental and socio-economic development.
Thomas Nilsen studied at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology.