The looming missile crisis in the Arctic

Bulletin, By Vladimir Marakhonov | December 4, 2025

By invading Ukraine in 2014 and then again in 2022, Russia has created devastating strains in the global balance of power. It also opened new frontiers of tension, some visible to the naked eye and others harder to discern, yet all highly unpleasant for Moscow.

Ukraine’s spectacular attack in June on Russian bombers at air bases in northern and western Russia, using cheap drones, has revealed new threats to Russia’s strategic capabilities and forced it to redeploy its bombers to Far East bases. The recent decisions by Finland and Sweden to join NATO and defense cooperation agreements between the Nordic countries and the United States have also put Russia’s Northern Fleet naval forces at risk. These forces can’t be easily relocated, increasing the risk of a missile crisis in Northwest Russia, near the Barents Sea. Simply put, a variety of military agreements now give the United States the ability to quickly deploy missiles in Norway and Finland that could reach Russia’s Northern Fleet and other strategic assets in a matter of minutes.

Any decision to make such a deployment could create a Cuban Missile Crisis situation between NATO and Russia that could lead to war.

Russia’s Northern naval bases. Russia’s fleet of nuclear-powered, nuclear-armed ballistic missile submarines—an important part of Russia’s nuclear triad—is roughly equally divided between the Northern Fleet (in the Arctic Ocean) and the Pacific Fleet. Historically, the Northern Fleet’s bases have had a serious strategic vulnerability due to geographic and climatic features of the Russian part of the Barents Sea, where they are located. These bases are concentrated in the Murmansk region on the Kola Peninsula, the northwestern-most part of Russia. The region is bordered by Norway to the northwest, Finland to the west, the Barents Sea to the northeast, the White Sea to the southeast, and only a narrow strip connecting to mainland Russia to the southwest.

Moving these naval bases further east is hardly possible because the Gulf Stream keeps only a limited area of the Barents Sea from freezing all year round, approximately up to Cape Svyatoy Nos, located west of the entrance to the White Sea. Everything located further east freezes in winter, although the extent and duration of the seasonal freezing vary each year, and sea ice is declining in the Barents Sea due to surface warming in the Gulf Stream. Therefore, the most convenient bays for Russia to base its fleet are located west of the Kola Bay, on the shores closest to Norway and Finland…………………………………..

Cold War restraint is over. During World War II and the post-war years, the entire Russian Northern Fleet infrastructure was built around Murmansk, which was Russia’s only ice-free northern port with good connections to the railway system. At the time, this proximity to Finland and Norway was of little importance. But with strengthened Nordic-US military ties and the development of short-range missiles, the Northern Fleet’s location became a real danger for both sides as missiles could be rapidly moved around and loaded on ships and submarines.

Finland maintained its neutral status throughout the Cold War and was bound to the Soviet Union by several international treaties. Norway—which had joined NATO in 1949 but had numerous overlapping interests with Russia in the Barents Sea—voluntarily imposed restrictions on NATO ground forces and NATO air flights in the Finnmark area east of the Porsanger fjord, which borders Russia. This self-imposed restraint helped Norway to sign a maritime border demarcation agreement with Russia in 2010 on terms that some Russian experts considered favorable to Oslo. Hawks in Russia even accused then-President Dmitriy Medvedev of betraying Russian interests after he signed the treaty.^[1] But perhaps one of the benefits for Russia was the continuation of Norway’s border policy of restraint, which Oslo had observed until May, when it started easing these restrictions on NATO training, and September, when it allowed a US Air Force Global Hawk remotely-operated surveillance drone to fly over Finnmark, raising some concerns………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

The deployment by the United States of advanced short-range ballistic missile systems to Norway’s Finnmark or Finland’s Lapland regions could lead to a crisis that resembles the 1962 Cuban missile crisis—this time, however, in the opposite way. Should Russia detect the presence of US missiles in these regions, the tensions would more certainly soar, with Moscow probably issuing a warning to Washington to immediately remove these missiles or else risk being attacked.

The defense cooperation agreements that the United States signed with the Northern European countries have certainly advanced US security interests. But their implementation could lead to a more dangerous situation in which conventional forces—not limited by any agreements—may alter the effective balance of strategic forces in the region………………………https://thebulletin.org/2025/12/the-looming-missile-crisis-in-the-arctic/?utm_source=ActiveCampaign&utm_medium=email&utm_content=Ukraine%20s%20Energoatom%2C%20Holtec%20International%2C%20and%20the%20US%20retreat%20from%20fighting%20corruption%20abroad&utm_campaign=20251201%20Monday%20Newsletter%20%28Copy%29