Nato chief: Russian Arctic militarisation a ‘strategic challenge’
- Wrapping up a Canada visit, Nato Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg stressed the need to strengthen security along the alliance’s northern flank to counter Russia
- Stoltenberg also expressed concerns about China’s reach into the Arctic for shipping and resources exploration, with plans to build the world’s largest icebreaker fleet
Nato Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg on Friday stressed the need to strengthen security along the alliance’s northern flank to counter Russia, as he wrapped up a visit to Canada that included a tour of its Arctic defences.
“The high north is strategically important for Euro-Atlantic security,” Stoltenberg told a news conference at an airbase in Cold Lake, Alberta, noting that with Finland and Sweden joining, seven of eight Arctic states will be Nato members.
“The shortest path to North America for Russian missiles and bombers would be over the North Pole,” he also warned. “This makes Norad’s role vital for North America and therefore also for Nato.”
Norad is the North American Aerospace Defence Command, a US-Canadian organisation.
The Nato chief and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau toured a Cold War-era early warning radar site, and observed Canadian Arctic military exercises.
Russia’s capabilities in the far north “are a strategic challenge for the whole alliance,” he said, citing a significant Russian military build-up in the region.
This includes, he outlined, the reopening of “hundreds of new and former Soviet era Arctic military sites,” and its use of the high north “as a test bed for the most advanced weapons including hypersonic missiles.”
