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“Shiver, bourgeois! You’re done with!”
That verbal one-fingered salute to Svalbard and its neighbors in the Norwegian Arctic is courtesy of a Russian politician who destabalized the Ukraine and is now in charge of a new government agency setting its sights on the far north.
Dmitry Rogozin, who has been individually sanctioned by EU, U.S. and other countries for his role in the Ukraine, will head a commission responsible for national security, economic and social issues in the Arctic, according to RIA Novosti.
His pirate threat was a Twitter message in 2013 responding to Norway’s concerns about Russia deploying strategic nuclear submarines in the Arctic. Russia has since conducted numerous nuclear-related exercises with subs and planes near Svalbard and other northern waters, and sent planes on flights threatening to encroach into Norwegan air space.
In the most recent incident of note, a Russian bomber intercepted Jan. 28 by Norwegian F-16s outside Finnmark was carrying a nuclear warhead, according to the Sunday Express of London. Russia’s Defense Ministry is denying the allegation.
