The Arctic has again become Moscow’s nuclear bluster playground

This autumn came with spectacular headlines thrown at us in the media from the propaganda apparatus in Moscow: A strategic nuclear exercise, tests of both a nuclear-powered and nuclear-capable cruise missile and an underwater drone version of the same, a new class of nuclear submarines and a call to resume nuclear testing. 

It is all happening in the Arctic.

For Vladimir Putin and his ex-KGB cohort, all of the above-mentioned tactics bring Soviet nostalgia back onto the table. A look into history can help elucidate today's escalating Russian nuclear brinksmanship. 

The FSB, like its predecessors the KGB and the NKVD, has always been closely linked with nuclear weapons programs. 

It was Stalin’s main butcher and head of the NKVD, Lavrentiy Beria, who oversaw the Mayak plutonium production facility, creating the first nuclear bomb which was completed in 1949. Generals from the NKVD, which eventually became the KGB in 1954, were appointed to top management positions at nuclear production and research facilities. 

The Soviet Union built ten isolated nuclear cities, all closely guarded from the greater society by the state’s security services. Hundreds of thousands of people lived in such secret cities known by their post-code names, like Chelyabinsk-65 (later Ozersk), Tomsk-7 (Seversk), Krasnoyarsk-26 (Zheleznogorsk) and Gorkiy-130 / Arzamas-16 (Sarov). 

Workers, scientists and their families were heavily monitored by the KGB.

All facilities within the Soviet nuclear complex had one thing in common: A total negligence of safety. When shit hit the fan, the main damage control strategy was secrecy as a precursor to crisis. Terror and mass repression were by the KGB preferred over solving technical obstacles. Protecting the state’s interests became more important than avoiding radioactive contamination or protecting workers and the population from being exposed to lethal doses of radiation. 

Only later we learned about the 1957 Kyshtym disaster, the 1968 Lake Karachay dust spread, the severe radiation sickness among people living along the banks of the Techa River and in the villages surrounding the Semipalatinsk test site.

The same secrecy reigned up here in the north. Serious reactor accident occurred with the Northern Fleet's submarines K-19 in 1961, K-11 in 1965, K-27 in 1968, K-222 in 1980 and the K-192 in 1989, to mention a few. The latter happened as the submarine was surfacing northwest of Senja in northern Norway and airborne leakages of radioactivity was measured a few days later in the fishing town of Vardø. 

Instead of dealing with the most damaged reactors in a professional way, they were simply dumped in the Kara Sea, east of Novaya Zemlya. Out of sight, out of mind. 

A serious leak of highly radioactive water in 1982 from the Navy's spent nuclear fuel pool storage facility in Andreeva Bay on the Kola Peninsula, a short 55 kilometres from the border with Norway, was not officially confirmed until several years after the breakup of the Soviet Union. 

In the face of Ronald Reagan's Strategic Defence Initiativ in 1983, nicknamed Star Wars, the Kremlin decided to take countermeasures. While the United States was planning to develop a space-based missile defence system to protect against ballistic missiles, the Soviets started to build submarines that could dive deeper than ever before. The idea was to assure that second-strike nuclear warheads could be brought to the shores of the US without being detected or stopped.

The fate of the K-278 Komsomolets is well known. When the deep-diving titanium hull submarine left to sea from her home base in Zapadnaya Litsa, the chief commander of the division warned his Navy superiors that the vessel was not seaworthy. However, his concerns were overruled and the submarine sailed out to the waters where the shallow Barents Sea meets the deeper Norwegian Sea. 

Again, the state's security interests were given higher priority than the risks.

On April 7, 1989, the Komsomolets sank when a fire that started after deep-diving tests were conducted south of Bear Island. Forty-one sailors died and the submarine still rests on the seafloor with one reactor and two plutonium warheads. 

Construction of the second Mike-class titanium hull submarine was shortly thereafter halted at the yard in Severodvinsk. The nuclear arms race had already gone too far. The Soviet Union's economy was struggling massively. 

Mikhail Gorbachev knew this better than most. In his landmark Murmansk speech in October 1987, the General Secretary called for the Arctic as a "zone of peace". The policy included establishing a nuclear-free zone and promoting international cooperation in domains like environmental protection and scientific research. 

Guess who didn't liked Gorbachev's idea. 

But this time the Cheka's successors failed and the KGB's unsuccessful August 1991 coup against Gorbachev sealed the fate of the Soviet Union. 

Massive east-west nuclear disarmament followed. Trust and friendship developed.

Norway and Europe contributed with billions of euros. Joint technical expertise on nuclear safety and radiation protection brought experts and politicians together. Up north, people on the Kola Peninsula and in Severodvinsk gained the most. Joint Russian-Norwegian marine resources in the Barents Sea also thrived. No one wanted radioactive cod, whether it be bacalao or fish and chips. 

However, the KGB's successors in the FSB were still looming in the shadows of cross-border cooperation. Who doesn't remember how the FSB oversaw in most bilateral- and multilateral negotiations in Murmansk in the 1990s and early 2000s. 

The FSB never lost their genetic linkage to Minatom, later Rosatom. 

The state nuclear corporation is in charge of handling radioactive waste, but it is also the structure that under Putin's brinkmanship now brushes dust off old Soviet mad-scientist ideas to build crazy nuclear-powered weapons systems. Like the Burevestnik and the Poseidon. 

Putin claims that both the nuclear-powered cruise missile and the nuclear-powered underwater vehicle are a response to Donald Trump's renewed "Golden Dome" multi-layer defence system against incoming nuclear missiles. That is not true. Work on the doomsday weapons started long before Trump was inaugurated in 2017. 

These are psychological weapons that only serve one purpose: helping the FSB stay in power by projecting a picture of the outside world as hostile and Russia as surrounded by enemies. 

Although it is an extremely dangerous game, playing with Armageddon weapons might very well prove to be the first steps on the pathway towards the fall of the current repressive regime. Just like the last Cold War’s arms race brought an end to the Soviet Union. 

Of course we have to take seriously any threat to use nuclear weapons. Putin is under stress because he eventually will lose the war in Ukraine. 

This is the main reason why he is threatening with nuclear weapons and pushes Rosatom and the military to speed up construction of the new systems. It is under stress things tend to go bad. Which engineer dare to warn an angry dictator if he or she sees a loose screw in the reactor that could delay the deployment of a weapon Putin already has bragged in public about?

The initial cover-up following the explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant 40 years ago severely damaged the Kremlin's credibility with its own citizens. It exposed outdated technology and a lack of accountability. By the end it even made the newspaper Pravda publicly criticize the government. 

This time, the Barents Observer brings major concerns to the table in advance of a possible new major nuclear disaster. Such accident might very well happen in the Arctic. 

In reality, the Arctic has become the main laboratory and playground for all nuclear weapons systems that the joint-venture FSB, Rosatom and military are creating. 

The fire on board the top-secret nuclear-powered special purpose submarine Losharik in 2019 killed 14 people near Russia's maritime border with Norway. The explosion of the Burevestnik missile in the White Sea a month later caused five Rosatom experts to die of acute radiation sickness. 

At the time, we at the newsdesk of the Barents Observer didn't understand how serious the accident was before state-controlled TASS issued a news saying "there were no emissions of harmful substances into the atmosphere, and background radiation levels are normal." 

Lying is the trademark of Russia's propaganda agencies. 

How can we believe that a country not capable of producing a decent microchip on its own can make nuclear-powered weapons systems without triggering major accidents. 

Russia is run by a regime where whistleblowers are falling out of windows and critical voices are sent to long-term prison sentences. We can not expect such authorities to inform the civilian population in the Russian north, nor its Nordic neighbors, when a cocktail of radioactive pollution is emerging.