Svalbard is an icy archipelago, home to less than 3,000 people and it is mandatory to carry a weapon when leaving the cities, due to the risk of attacks by polar bears. It is the northernmost permanently inhabited area on the entire globe. And it is also NATO’s “Achilles’ heel in the Arctic”as a Security Studies professor once called it.
Formally, Svalbard is under Norwegian sovereignty, but thanks to a centuries-old treaty, many other countries have the right to exploit its natural resources. Specifically, Russia, which has been mining in the region for years, often uses Ukrainian workers, mostly from the Donbass region. In the abandoned city of Pyramiden, it is still possible to find a bust of Lenin and a slogan which says “Communism is our goal”.
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Source: Observadora
