By Matthew Luxmoore | Photography by Andrea Gjestvang for WSJ

BARENTSBURG, Norway -- This coal mining town about 800 miles from the North Pole is part of Norway, a founding member of NATO. And yet, the salaries here are paid in rubles, TVs broadcast Russian government channels and Russian SIM cards are used in phones.

The local school, located on a street named after a famed Russian explorer, has three dozen children learning the Russian curriculum. The Russian tricolor flag is ubiquitous.

Barentsburg is part of the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard -- a geopolitical oddity created by a 1920 treaty that gave Norway sovereignty over the territory but granted access to many countries, including Russia, China and the U.S., on the condition that all sides refrain from using it for military purposes.

Now, concerns here are mounting that Russia's growing military footprint in the Arctic and President Trump's threats to annex Greenland risk upending decades of tense calm in the High North. Unlike in Greenland, which Trump falsely contends is "covered with Russian and Chinese ships, " Russia and China have a real presence in Svalbard -- and are deepening their cooperation.

The mayor of the Norwegian town of Longyearbyen -- around four hours from Barentsburg by snowmobile -- swept his hand over a map of the Arctic Circle on a recent morning. Almost two dozen white boxes to the east, southeast and across the Arctic Ocean from Svalbard marked the locations of Russian military bases.

"People spend a lot of time discussing what Trump will say next," said the mayor, Terje Aunevik, referring to the town's 2,600 residents, two-thirds of whom are Norwegian citizens. "But we stick to our strategy: Keep calm, be predictable and work with allies."

That strategy, a pillar of Norway's policy toward the Arctic for decades, has come under strain as the world around it becomes less predictable and its most powerful alliances -- first and foremost with the U.S. -- are undergoing their biggest stress test to date.

Places once peripheral to global politics, particularly the Arctic, have become new hot spots. And there are few places in the Arctic more coveted than Svalbard, which sits along the shortest flight path for Russian missiles targeting the U.S. and holds natural resources Norway has zealously guarded for decades.

The U.S. and Norway say a Chinese scientific facility on Svalbard is a hub for military research. Svalbard's only university banned Chinese students last year, after Norway's domestic intelligence service characterized them as a security risk.

Russia is now seeking to attract Chinese and other foreign scientists to a new research station in Barentsburg. Norway has joined Western sanctions on Russia, and relations between Longyearbyen and Barentsburg, once cordial, have frayed.

At Barentsburg's bustling canteen owned by Arktikugol, the Russian state-owned company that runs the settlement, miners from the Russian-held part of Ukraine's Donbas region blamed Trump for making the world more unstable as they sipped beer after a day underground. Daria Slyunyaeva, an Arktikugol official, dismissed the U.S. president's warnings about Russian designs on the Arctic.

"Most of the Arctic already belongs to Russia," Slyunyaeva said in an interview in her office at the company's headquarters, where symbols of the Russian state are displayed in the corridors and Soviet-style posters hang on the walls. "Claims that Russia wants even more of it are empty words."

But Norwegian officials point to many recent statements coming from Moscow. Russia's foreign ministry has questioned Oslo's sovereignty over Svalbard -- which comprises nearly one fifth of Norwegian territory -- and senior lawmakers in Russia's ruling party have suggested reaching a deal with the U.S. president over the division of Arctic territories.

"We badly need Spitsbergen," Andrei Gurulyov, a retired general turned lawmaker said in January of last year, using Russia's name for Svalbard. He said Russia should take over and boost its military presence across the region, which includes a growing fleet of nuclear-powered icebreakers. "There will be great bases there that can exert power over the entire Arctic. We should be open about this."

Norway has moved to strengthen its grip over Svalbard. It has increased sea patrols by frigates, tightened rules for foreigners and talked of launching exploration of the surrounding sea bed, which holds deposits of precious rare earths in demand by modern industry. It has declared 2026 its "Total Defense Year" and urged participation from Norwegians across the spectrum, from fishermen training to spot suspicious ships to schoolchildren learning first aid.

The archipelago has weak spots. A vessel carrying food to the Svalbard in January had to stop en route due to technical issues, leaving the islands without food deliveries for days. The underwater cables that keep it connected to the internet are susceptible to sabotage.

"Svalbard's remoteness makes it vulnerable," said Hedvig Moe, an Oslo-based lawyer who grew up Svalbard and was formerly the deputy director of Norway's domestic intelligence agency.

Norway has long relied on the U.S. for Svalbard's defense. It gives the American military access to its bases on the mainland and supplies its allies with information about Russian submarines plying the Bear Gap, which separates Svalbard from the rest of Norway.

Some officials in Oslo argue that Norway should place military assets on Svalbard as a form of deterrence, a move that Moscow says would contravene the clause in the 1920 treaty that forbids use of the islands for warlike purposes.

Andreas Østhagen, an expert on the Arctic at the independent Fridtjof Nansen Institute outside Oslo, said Russia could respond to such a move by invading the islands to safeguard its access to the Bear Gap and defend its Kola Peninsula, which hosts the world's largest stockpile of nuclear weapons.

"It's obvious that Svalbard is the second or third domino that falls if we're in an actual NATO-Russia conflict," Østhagen said. "I still don't think it's the most likely scenario, but it's much more likely now than it was a few months ago, because of the United States undermining both NATO and territorial sovereignty."

The Russians in Barentsburg scoff at the prospect of war in the Arctic. They say they are focused on preserving Moscow's presence on Svalbard, which is a far cry from what it used to be. "Our goal is to safeguard what we have," said Petr Gramatik, Barentsburg's 24-year-old Russian Orthodox priest.

Russia's consul in Barentsburg, Andrei Chemerilo, denounced Norway's sanctions in written comments and said that all sides should respect the Svalbard treaty. He warned Norway and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization against taking "steps toward integrating the archipelago into their military planning."

Chemerilo said Russia earned its right to be on Svalbard through its contribution to the islands' exploration. The local museum in Barentsburg focuses on Russia's centurieslong presence on the archipelago, which Moscow says predates even the European explorers credited with discovering the land in the late 16th century.

Soviet-era murals throughout Barentsburg -- with slogans such as "Our goal is communism!" -- hark back to a time when the settlement was triple its current size and served as a poster child for socialism on NATO soil.

At the height of the Cold War, Moscow operated an airport on Svalbard and three mining towns complete with state-of-the-art health facilities and 24-hour canteens. Today, the pared-back mining business is unprofitable. With Oslo asserting greater control, Slyunyaeva says Barentsburg has to seek Norway's permission to even put a new coat of paint on its aging buildings.

The two Svalbard towns now hardly interact. The Norwegian governor visits Barentsburg from time to time to speak with residents and address their concerns. He speaks in an auditorium of Russia's cultural center that is decorated with fading artwork commemorating sporting competitions and cultural events that used to be held jointly with the Norwegians.

In Longyearbyen, owners of the Kroa seafood restaurant decided to discard a marble bust of communist revolutionary Vladimir Lenin that had been given to them as a gift from Barentsburg. The bust was too heavy to move, one of the owners said, so they obscured it instead with a large Ukrainian flag.

Write to Matthew Luxmoore at matthew.luxmoore@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

February 20, 2026 23:00 ET (04:00 GMT)

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