The Almak, a roughly 40-meter Russian-flagged trawler crowned with an imposing array of antennas, has just dropped anchor in the Norwegian port of Kirkenes. Despite the early hour, two police officers board the vessel to check the crew’s identities and inspect the ship.
Since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, Russian sailors authorized to stop in this town, located 400 kilometers north of the Arctic Circle, have been placed under heightened surveillance. “We believe Moscow uses them to gather intelligence,” explains Johan Roaldsnes, regional director of Norway’s counterintelligence service (PST). “And we try to determine whether they are equipped with radio devices enabling them to communicate on military frequencies.”
The pastel-colored houses of Kirkenes illuminate the mouth of a fjord flowing into the Barents Sea, close to the northernmost crossing point between Europe and Russia. At the end of September, the newspaper began in this windswept town a journey lasting several weeks along the…
