The 61st Naval Infantry Brigade is believed to have several hundred warriors fighting in Ukraine. Among them is now also the brigade's priest, Sergei Cherichenko.
The structure established by Josef Stalin to fight "anti-Soviet elements" is today praised by the security agencies in the heavily militarised Murmansk region. Strong forces in Russia call for the resurrection of the notorious service across the whole country.
Aleksei Kosteev himself studied at the local School No 8 before he enrolled in the naval infantry, fought in Syria and was killed on the battlefield in Ukraine.
But international shipping companies shun the remote and icy waters along Russia's increasingly militarised Arctic coast. Figures from 2023 show that shipments lag far behind the Kremlin's targets.
It is unknown how many soldiers from the north Russian region that actually have lost their lives in the war, but a local count now reaches four hundred.
The university that teaches Russia's diplomats enters into cooperation with Trust Arktikugol, the Russian state company operating on the Norwegian Arctic archipelago.
Atle is journalist and Publisher of the Independent Barents Observer.
In 2002, he founded the Barents Observer. He was editor until 2009 and later worked as journalist and project coordinator for several European cross-border cooperation projects. In late 2015, following a conflict over editorial rights, he re-established the Barents Observer as an independent and non-profit stock company along with the rest of the newspaper crew.
Atle has a degree in Russian studies from the University of Oslo and studied journalism at the Moscow State University.