Norway’s defence minister, Tore Sandvik, recently warned that Russia must not be allowed to control the Bear Gap. This is a stretch of water that runs roughly 400 miles between Bear Island in the southernmost portion of the Svalbard archipelago and Cape North on Norway’s northern mainland. It serves as the geographical boundary point where the shallow Barents Sea meets the much deeper Norwegian Sea.

Russia has long sought to control the Bear Gap. Control of the waterway would give Russian submarines easier access to the Norwegian Sea, where complex acoustic conditions make detection much harder for Nato forces. From there, Sandvik warned these submarines would be able to threaten Nato countries such as the UK and Denmark directly with hypersonic missiles, which have an operational range of up to 1,500km.

There is also a defensive element to controlling the Bear Gap. From the 1970s onwards, Soviet and later Russian doctrine has emphasised what is termed a “bastion strategy”. Russia has sought to create heavily defended perimeters in and around the Kola Peninsula in its far north-west to protect its ballistic missile and nuclear-attack submarines in “bubbles” close to home waters.

Russia’s northern fleet, which is based near the port city of Murmansk in the northern part of the Kola Peninsula, accounts for two-thirds of its naval nuclear strike capabilities. Thus, Russia sees control of the Bear Gap as key to........

© The Conversation