In the studio is Thomas Nilsen, Editor of the Barents Observer and expert on nuclear weapons in the Arctic. In the podcast, Thomas explains how Russia is making big efforts on the development of nuclear-powered weapons, including the Burevestnik cruise missile and the Poseidon underwater drone. He also outlines Russia’s ongoing activities at the nuclear test sites in Novaya Zemlya and the continued construction of nuclear submarines. […]
Over several years, you have written stories about the Kola Peninsula and the situation in the region. And you have used satellite maps that shows how Russia is developing its nuclear arsenals in the north. How is Russia developing nuclear weapons in the region?
Well, what we see on satellite images is that there has been a quite extensive rebuilding of the facilities at the northern test site at Novaya Zemlya over the last two, maybe three year period.
The northern test site is the active one. It’s where Russia conducted underground nuclear testings up to 1990. But we don’t know exactly what is happening on the ground. We see the buildings. This could be also a renewing of the quite run-down Soviet facilities that they had. In a kind of the same way as we have seen at other military sites in the Russian Arctic, where the Soviet buildings at Severnaya Zemlya, Franz Josef Land and so on, has been abandoned and they have built new buildings. So it is an area quite close to the Matochin Strait. It’s called the Severnaya base, the northern base, where a lot of new buildings has appeared over the last few years. Läs artikel