As the war in Ukraine grinds on, Russia is not so quietly expanding its military activities in this region, too. In the past six years, Russia has built 475 military sites<\/a> along its northern border. The Kola peninsula and the archipelagos of the Barents Sea have seen dozens of new airstrips, bunkers and bases<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But while the region has long been one of Russia\u2019s most important commercial and military hubs, the deep waters of the Barents Sea are among the most biodiverse of any in the Arctic region, home to puffins, dolphins, seals, and rare bowhead whales, as well as being home to some of the world\u2019s biggest fish populations. To its southern side, on the Kola peninsula, herds of wild reindeer can still be found and its eastern rivers, free from hydroelectric dams, are among the few remaining spawning grounds for Atlantic salmon.<\/p>\n\n\n \u201cThere are still villages without road systems, where they are maintaining a unique and traditional lifestyle,\u201d says Tero Mustonen, a conservationist with Snowchange Cooperative<\/a>, who has worked in the Kola region for 25 years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The unprecedented new military buildup has experts concerned about devastating results for these delicate Arctic ecosystems. It is already among the most polluted places on Earth. Currents that carry warm water from the Atlantic Ocean into the Barents Sea make it one of the world\u2019s great marine garbage patches<\/a>, while decades of Soviet nuclear tests<\/a>, the dumping of radioactive waste<\/a>, and industrial pollution<\/a> have left many waterways highly toxic<\/a>, contributing to elevated rates of disease<\/a> among local people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The great concern is that oil pollution from ships that are not equipped for the Arctic will greatly increase<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n Tero Mustonen, conservationist<\/p>\n\n\n\n The latest military buildup has already resulted in an increase in weapons testing<\/a> and marine traffic, including from new and refurbished nuclear-powered icebreakers and submarines \u2013 with the attendant risk of nuclear accidents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But that is not the only threat to the Barents Sea ecosystem spurred by Russia\u2019s invasion of Ukraine. As it finds itself increasingly alienated from the western economy, Russia has accelerated its efforts to open the region to commercial activity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In April, after western nations suspended their participation in the Arctic Coast Guard Forum, which Russia chaired, it signed a cooperation agreement<\/a> with the Chinese coast guard to conduct combined exercises to police its northern coastline. The move was widely viewed as an attempt to fulfil longstanding Chinese ambitions<\/a> to assert itself as a \u201cnear-Arctic state\u201d, gaining greater access to commercial activity and mineral resources in the region.<\/p>\n\n\n But Russia\u2019s northern sea route, which halves the time it takes to ship goods between Europe and Asia, is still unreliable. Dozens of ships were stranded in early sea ice<\/a> in 2021, while the longer route east to Asia is often far more ice-clogged and perilous than the alternative route westward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Nonetheless, experts say, Russia\u2019s increasing dependence on China is likely to increase traffic on the route<\/a>. \u201cMore oil, more shipping, more resources will be transferred between those countries that are still trading \u2026 [including] more shipping with vessels that are not equipped for the Arctic Ocean,\u201d says Mustonen. \u201cThe great concern there \u2026 is that the oil pollution from ships and tankers that are not equipped for the environment will greatly increase.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n More shipping also means increased concentrations of ozone and nitrate aerosol<\/a> that are dangerous to human health, and nitrogen and sulphur deposits that could devastate marine ecosystems. In the Barents Sea that concern is particularly acute, as the region is already quite possibly the fastest-warming location on Earth<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It is not only the scale of shipping that is changing, but also the cargo being carried. Without access to Norwegian offshore technologies and investment, Russia has cooled on oil and gas projects in the Barents Sea \u2013 and turned instead to new open-pit mines in the Murmansk regionof the Kola peninsula to secure domestic supplies of minerals such as lithium that are crucial to electric-vehicle battery production.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Vulnerable northern nature is being destroyed \u2013 and it cannot be restored<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n Andrei Danilov, Sami activist<\/p>\n\n\n\n Many of those mines will be on the lands of the Indigenous Sami people, which have come under unprecedented pressure<\/a> since the invasion of Ukraine. Aleksandr Slupachik, a Sami activist from Kola forced to flee to Norway from Russia, says two mines have already been developed on traditional reindeer herding pastures. \u201cI think it will cause big ecological problems in the future,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Areas once set aside as nature reserves \u2013 such as the Lake Seidozero region, a sacred Sami site \u2013 are also being opened to industry, according to Andrei Danilov, another Russian Sami activist in exile. \u201cThere is no question of any observance of international law and coordination with Indigenous peoples<\/a>,\u201d he says. \u201cVulnerable northern nature is being destroyed \u2013 and it cannot be restored.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n Relations with the west, experts say, have been key to preventing these kinds of ecological abuses in the Russian Arctic, and not only in the mining sector. Russia had recently started to invest heavily in Atlantic salmon farming, near important spawning sites across the border in Norway. \u201cThe fear is that [with] Russia removing themselves from the international regulation on salmon farming \u2026 diseases and sea lice and salmon parasites will proliferate from the big bins of Atlantic salmon,\u201d says Mustonen. Likewise, Norway was one of the only countries investing in cleaning up<\/a> the sea\u2019s nuclear waste, toxic remnants of the cold war.<\/p>\n\n\n![\"White](\"https:\/\/i.guim.co.uk\/img\/media\/6bc46bf11fea96727802410ad5b3c9f6e47b6813\/0_0_4303_2859\/master\/4303.jpg?width=445&dpr=1&s=none\")
\n
![\"Bow](\"https:\/\/i.guim.co.uk\/img\/media\/a00bf80e081dcd4d9b1dc36a08a14236e72aa90e\/0_187_5616_3370\/master\/5616.jpg?width=445&dpr=1&s=none\")
\n
![\"The](\"https:\/\/i.guim.co.uk\/img\/media\/2039a8fefdb0c6de40c42efc6fad0873e4592e10\/0_61_2048_1228\/master\/2048.jpg?width=445&dpr=1&s=none\")
![\"A](\"https:\/\/i.guim.co.uk\/img\/media\/0cb9e12c4c12a964852e5ef2d45e83091b6daa39\/0_175_5249_3149\/master\/5249.jpg?width=460&quality=85&auto=format&fit=max&s=17bdb13966add20666184570c91ed3a3\")
<\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n