Northern Fleet kicks off major Barents Sea command and staff exercise

The exercise  comes unsurprisingly. Earlier this week, the Barents Observer reported about Russia issuing NOTAM-warnings for two larger areas north and south of Norway’s Bear Island in the western Barents Sea. “Impact areas for missiles,” the warning to civilian air traffic said.

Norway, worried about consequences for its search- and rescue capabilities in the waters around Svalbard, can do nothing to hinder Russia from using the Norwegian Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) as impact area for cruise missile. This is international waters.

“The Law of the Seas gives states access to conduct military exercises in other states’ 200-mile zones,” says spokesperson with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Oslo, Ane Haavardsdatter Lunde to the Barents Observer.

“Russia can therefor carry out military training activities in Norwegian 200-miles zone,” she adds.

Lunde underlines that Norwegian authorities assumes Russia’s military exercises are “carried out in a way that safeguards Norwegian rights under the Law of the Sea and international law in general.”

That also include’s Norway’s fishing rights, Lunde says.

Fishing trawlers and other civilian vessels are warned by Russia’s Sea Port administration for the European Arctic to keep out of the two large training areas in the western Barents Sea. For a trawler captain, that could mean days without fishing and extra fuel costs by sailing away to safe distance.

The Russian warnings are operative from Friday morning to Monday evening.

“During the exercise, under the leadership of the commander of the fleet, Admiral Aleksander Moiseev, various options for managing the forces and troops of the fleet will be tested in the performance of tasks to protect the sovereignty of the Russian Federation in the waters of the Northern Sea Route,” the press service of the Northern Fleet in Severomorsk writes.