Russia does not take kindly to plans by NATO to extend its presence in the Arctic and promised on Monday, through the spokesperson of the Kremlin, to “protect its interests in an adequate manner,” the Russian news agency Interfax reports.
Moscow lays claim to a 1.2-million-square-meter portion of the North Pole that is rich in oil and gas.
Russia also has a major military deployment in the Arctic, which is “a strategic challenge” for NATO as the Pole is the shortest route to North America for Russian missiles and bombers, NATO’s Norwegian Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg noted on Friday.
On Sunday, Stoltenberg told the German newspaper “Welt am Sonntag” that NATO needed to strengthen its presence in the Far North. He said the Kremlin was currently reopening Soviet-era bases and stationing new high-tech weapons, such as hypersonic missiles, in the region.
The NATO Secretary General is also worried about China’s growing presence in the region. The North Pole borders on several countries: the United States and Russia, along with Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland and Norway.
