An Arctic Gateway at Risk: Protecting Svalbard from Russian Aggression

The stretch between Svalbard and the North Cape of mainland Norway constitutes the Bear Gap, which is the Arctic Circle analogue to the better-known Greenland-Iceland-UK Gap.4 Svalbard’s proximity to the Kola Peninsula and Novaya Zemlya—home to Russia’s Northern Fleet and its nuclear weapons test site, respectively—further helps explain Moscow’s enduring interest in Svalbard. The archipelago’s importance is likely to grow as maritime trade increases in the Arctic. The Pentagon’s 2024 Arctic Strategy notes, “Reduction in sea ice due to climate change means chokepoints such as the Bering Strait between Alaska and Russia and the Barents Sea north of Norway are becoming more navigable and more economically and militarily significant.”

The Kremlin’s campaign to undermine Norway’s sovereignty over these strategic islands has continued for decades. The archipelago is vulnerable to such pressure in part because of the unique nature of the 1920 Svalbard Treaty, which was intended to resolve competing claims over the islands shortly after World War I. The treaty affirms Norway’s “absolute sovereignty” over Svalbard but also grants treaty signatories fishing and hunting rights, as well as the “exercise and practice of all maritime, industrial, mining or commercial enterprises.”8 The treaty permits signatories to establish settlements on the islands. Nearly 40 percent of the archipelago’s 2,500 residents are foreign citizens, most of them Russians.9 In 2004, China established its first Arctic research station on Svalbard.

Disruption at one of two undersea cables to Svalbard (Norway)
The Independent Barents Observer ^ | Jan 9 2021 | Thomas Nilsen
Posted on 1/11/2022, 1:02:16 AM by texas booster

Operator of what is the world’s northernmost fiber optic subsea cable, Space Norway, has located the disruption to somewhere between 130 to 230 kilometers from Longyearbyen in the area where the seabed goes from 300 meters down to 2700 meters in the Greenland Sea.

The error happened on Friday morning, January 7.

Svalbard Undersea Cable System is a twin submarine fiber optic communication cable connecting Longyearbyen with Andøya north of Harstad in northern Norway.

The two cables are 1,375 and 1,339 km respectively, and Space Norway informs in a press release that there is good connection in the cable still working, but with the other broken there is no redundancy.

How the damaged has happened is not clear, it will be examined, Space Norway informs. A ocean-going cable-laying vessel would be required to repair the cable.

In addition to providing the settlement of Longyearbyen with internet broadband, the fiber optic cables serve the SvalSat park of more than 100 satellite antennas on a nearby mountain plateau. SvalSat is today the world’s largest commercial ground station with worldwide customers. Its location at 78°N, halfway between mainland Norway and the North Pole, gives the station a unique position to provide all-orbit support to operators of polar-orbiting satellites.

Norway’s Minister of Justice and Public Security, Emilie Enger Mehl, says in a press release Sunday morning that her ministry follows the situation closely.

“I have been informed that an error has occurred on part of one of the two fiber connections between Svalbard and mainland Norway. Communication to and from Svalbard is still running as normal, even though one of the connections now has failed,” Enger Mehl says.

From another thread:

“…And Pituffik is not the only high-latitude space base that is vital to the US, and indeed the West. Svalbard is a Norwegian island chain 600 miles north of Norway’s most northernmost city Tromsø. It is the world’s most important space base, providing ground services to more satellites than any other facility on Earth. If you control space, you control the Earth, and this time Russia is already there. The US believes that nobody will fight them if they move on Greenland. Europe has said it will be the end of NATO. This is just what Russia wants, and it’s got its eyes on Svalbard.

Polar ground stations are the only places where satellites in certain vital orbits can downlink their data and receive commands on every lap of the Earth. They are important to gather data for science and weather forecasting, and internet traffic generally relies on the satellite infrastructure in Svalbard.

The Svalbard Treaty of 1920 between Norway and Russia gives sovereignty to Norway, but gives Russia rights to settlements there. The treaty bans military fortifications and activities on Svalbard, but satellite data of almost any kind can have dual use: for example, the weather over Ukraine and its internet traffic have military significance. While Svalbard doesn’t work directly with military satellites, other ground stations in northern Norway do, connecting with satellites that do military communications and missile warning.

In its early years such data had to be shipped out on magnetic tape, but since the early 2000s the island has been linked to mainland Norway with an undersea data cable that, along with a second cable, sends valuable data to the continent and provides the internet to the island.

In January 2022, one of the cables was cut. For 11 days the island ran on just one communications line. Some investigators suggest it was accidental, possibly due to a dragging anchor from a fishing boat, but inevitably suspicion turned on Russia. A Russian trawler passed over the cable’s path more than 20 times in the days before the cut. …”

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