Norway’s Military Build-Up Against Russia
Andrew Korybko
Andrew Korybko's Newsletter
Norway’s Military Build-Up Against Russia Poses A Serious Threat To Arctic Security. It began to take shape before the large-scale phase of the Ukrainian Conflict broke out in early 2022.
Russian Ambassador to Norway Nikolai Korchunov shared an update on his host country’s militarization, which he earlier discussed in detail a few months back, this time warning that “Four South Korean K9 self-propelled guns with a firing range of up to 40 km” were moved to the province that borders Russia. By 2030, Norway is expected to deploy up to 16 South Korean rocket launchers with a range of up to 500 km, which would put the Northern Fleet’s headquarters in Severomorsk within striking distance.
Separately, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova condemned the US’ own rocket launcher deployment to Norway, noting that they can fire Tomahawks against land and sea targets alike. Severomorsk is thus already within NATO’s range. These two statements followed Norway’s seizure of a Russian research vessel that was analyzed here as serving to solidify closer coordination within the Viking Bloc, the sub-regional bloc within NATO 3.0 between Scandinavia, Finland, and the Baltic States.
Upon closer scrutiny, these moves are only the latest manifestations of Norway’s military build-up against Russia, which began to take shape before the large-scale phase of the Ukrainian Conflict broke out in early 2022.
Norway already had over 230 military and security sites by 2018, as suggested by this map here showing “where it is illegal to take aerial photographs or video using a camera or any other type of sensors.” The year prior, in 2017, Norway began hosting a rotational US Marine force.


























