The 400-mile-wide stretch of water between the Svalbard archipelago and the mainland of northern Norway has a nickname: Bear Gap. It is the only way out for Russia’s Northern Fleet warships and submarines from its bases around Murmansk to the deep waters of the Atlantic ocean.
This is only one of a number of scandals that are putting the Royal Navy’s crewmen and women’s lives needlessly at risk
During the Cold War, these waters were the site of a cat-and-mouse game between Russian submarines and Britain’s Royal Navy, whose wartime mission was to close this chokepoint. Now it has become once again one of the most militarised areas on the planet, and tensions are at their highest for 40 years, just as – once again – British Prime Minister Keir Starmer failed to publish his government’s long-awaited Defence Investment Plan (DIP).
Russia has reopened more than 50 Cold War-era military bases in the Arctic. Its army may be weakened by the war in Ukraine, but its navy has deployed a new generation of stealthy, heavily armed and highly sophisticated submarines to confront Nato in these waters.
Norwegian fighters have scrambled 39 times in the first five months of this year to intercept and identify 51 Russian aircraft. This matches the number for the whole of 2025. In April, two Russian strategic bombers flew over the Barents Sea, one carrying a long-range cruise missile under its wing – such fly-overs have increased markedly since the Ukraine invasion.
