NATO’s “shield” against Russian aggression. The British military announced Wednesday it is opening a military base in Norway’s Great North to bolster NATO’s Arctic capabilities amid concerns over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

As Norway, which borders Russia, refuses to accept permanent bases for foreign soldiers, Camp Viking is set to open for ten years north of Tromsø and house commandos who will be trained to fight in extreme cold conditions.

“The location of the camp it is ideal for preventing threats in the region and allows Britain to react quickly in an emergency to protect the northern flank of NATO and its close ally Norway,” the British Ministry of Defense explained in a statement.

The base, located near Norwegian military installations, will maintain the presence of British commandos in the area, where a thousand of them took part in military exercises this winter.

Its construction was justified by “the emergence of the Great North as an important theater of operations” justifying “new facilities for the modern age”.

For its part, the Norwegian Ministry of Defense clarified that the facility was an old training center that had been used first by allied countries, and then by Dutch marines. “The camp is Norwegian and funded” from Norway, he emphasized.

A founding member of NATO, the Scandinavian country has refused permanent peacetime bases of foreign troops since 1949 so as not to provoke neighboring Russia, but regularly hosts allied troops to allow them to train for combat in the cold.

The British base is “neither new, nor in any way a violation of Norwegian policy on bases,” the ministry stressed, also noting that the base was occupied by foreign troops for only about six months a year.

The kingdom of Norway, which shares a 120-mile (198 km) border with Russia in the Great North, has supplied Ukraine with multiple military equipment, including artillery systems and ammunition, to help the country defend itself against a Russian invasion.

As for its neighbours, the conflict prompted Finland and Sweden to apply to join NATO in May 2022, reversing their policy of military neutrality that had been in place since the 1990s and had been inherited from decades of mandatory or post-war neutrality. of choice.