Deterrence in the High North: A Looming Crisis involving Russia & NATO

This briefing explores security in the Arctic region, looks at Russia's approach to the area including its development of nuclear capabilities, and analyses implications for NATO and future strategic moves. This article was written by Diego Toderi and edited by Tanvi Sureka.

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Introduction

“Let the North of the Globe, the Arctic, become a zone of Peace”. Declared by Gorbachev in Murmansk in 1987, this statement reflected the wider post-1991 idea (and myth) of the Arctic as an exceptional and unique zone of cooperation isolated from external geopolitical conflict.  The Arctic was supposedly a sphere of international harmony, where issues such as the environment and indigenous rights were prioritised over the traditional aspects of defence and deterrence. The invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and the ascension of Finland and Sweden to NATO in 2023 and 2024 respectively shattered this illusion, committing NATO to deterrence within an area that had long been ignored by planners. Yet despite this, discussions and analysis have only revolved around a small section of the Arctic. Whilst  Greenland has dominated discussions, trends in military exercises, political rhetoric and hybrid attacks point to the Barents Sea and the Kola Peninsula as the next focal point of strategic competition between NATO and Russia in the Arctic. This region, the linchpin of not only Russia’s high north strategy, but also its nuclear second-strike capability, presents unique challenges and existential risks to peace and stability as NATO seeks to deter Russia and defend the sovereignty of its 31st and 32nd member states.

For decades, the Arctic has been analysed through the lens of “Arctic Exceptionalism”. This idea stipulated that the Arctic was a region that was insulated from wider geopolitical trends and thus could be governed by a stable multilateral regime. Managed by institutions such as the Arctic Council, cooperation between the West and Russia in the Arctic remained strong over issues ranging from fisheries to maritime demarcation lines. The Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 marked a decisive turning point. On March 3, 2022, all members of the Arctic Council, except Russia, decided to suspend the Council’s work in response to the Russian invasion, essentially splitting the Arctic between a bloc of democratic states colloquially dubbed the Arctic 7 and Russia. However, more importantly, the war in Ukraine and fears of further Russian expansionism and aggression prompted Sweden and Finland to join NATO. The impact of this is profound, with the historic neutrality of these 2 Arctic states being critical to the openness and cooperative dynamics observed in the Nordic region and wider Arctic. The Arctic nowadays increasingly reflects the broader geopolitical trends and confrontations that have defined the global order in recent years. Cooperation and multilateralism are being increasingly superseded by more nakedly transactional and mercantilist themes, most prominently seen by Trump’s rhetoric and brinkmanship over Greenland.

In no other region is this felt more than in the Barents Sea and the Kola Peninsula. The ascension of Finland to NATO added a further 855 miles of border between the 2 opposing sides, directly next to Russia’s most developed and populous Arctic Oblast or administrative region. Due to its commitments to Article 5 and collective deterrence, NATO has had to rapidly scale up its activities in the Arctic. In 2024, NATO conducted the largest Arctic exercise in a generation during Nordic Response 2024, involving over 20,000 troops from across the alliance. Furthermore, NATO is setting up the command and physical infrastructure needed to host a permanent presence in the region. In February 2026, NATO set out plans for a new multi-domain mission called “Arctic Sentry” and the year before, it inaugurated the Multi-Corps Land Component Command Northwest in Finland.

Russia and the Nuclear Threat

For Russia, such developments are reinforcing a sense of strategic vulnerability and the idea that Russia is at risk of losing the advantage and grip it once held as the largest, most prominent and active Arctic actor. This sense of vulnerability is only reinforced by the increased presence of NATO forces in northern Finland and in the Barents Sea which Russia sees as a direct threat to its position in the Kola Peninsula and the Murmansk Oblast. The reason why Russia puts so much emphasis on this region is 2-fold.

Firstly, it represents the linchpin of Russia’s broader Arctic strategy. Russia’s approach to the Arctic has long been determined by the need to secure, expand and develop the Russian-governed section of the Northern Passage: the Northern Sea Route (NSR). This tract of maritime terrain running along Russia’s Arctic coast from the Pacific to the North Atlantic has gained increased prominence as reduced ice cover and Russian efforts to promote sea traffic has created opportunities for shipping companies to explore alternatives to the Suez route. Armed with 8 nuclear icebreakers, Rosatom, the state-nuclear company which operates the NSR, has seen the volume of goods go from 4 million tonnes in 2014 up to 36 million in 2023. Combined with efforts to expand energy exports and LNG production, the NSR represents a key economic lifeline for future growth that thus needs to be controlled and secured from outside interference. The Kola peninsula is positioned on the approaches to the NSR, and with its mass of airfields, radar stations and ships of the Northern Fleet of the Russian Navy, it is thus seen as critical in this regard.

The second aspect is more existential in nature. The Russian policy towards the Arctic has always been shaped by the need to maintain and develop a credible nuclear deterrent. Following the 2022 invasion, nuclear deterrence has been brought up to the top of Russia’s agenda as highlighted by its suspension of participation in New START and its continued use of nuclear sabre rattling in Ukraine. Historically and increasingly so today, the Arctic is the region in which Russia continues to test, develop and house both its civilian and military nuclear capabilities. In the last 5 years alone, the number of civil and military reactors has increased by 30%, from 61 to 81, with estimates suggesting there may be 118 total reactors in the region by 2035. Furthermore, and perhaps most importantly, a significant portion of Russia’s second-strike capabilities in the form of the Russian Northern Fleet’s ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs) are housed and maintained in the ports of the region. The Kola Peninsula and Barents Sea are thus seen as strategically critical both from an economic and deterrent point of view. It is thus no wonder that Russia continues to invest vast amounts of resources into the “perimeter defence” of the peninsula, ensuring that the area becomes a “bastion” that protects the SSBNs as well as ensuring them access to the Norwegian Sea and the wider Atlantic.

It is this very bastion that Russia feels is now under threat. Finland’s signing of a bilateral Defence Cooperation Agreement with the United States gives the US unimpeded access to agreed military facilities and transport infrastructure, allowing for the potential rapid deployment of long-range strike capabilities that could threaten the ability of Russian SSBNs to operate freely in the Barents Sea. Furthermore, melting ice sheets could give NATO the ability to project sea power and, by extension long-range strike, further up Russia’s arctic coast and deeper into Russia itself. At the same time it faces these growing threats, Russia’s war in Ukraine has further eroded its ability to credibly defend the region, with its highly trained and specialised spearhead Arctic brigades having had to be reconstituted multiple times due to high losses in Ukraine. At the same time, Ukraine has shown itself perfectly capable of hitting critical pieces of infrastructure in the region such as the Olenya airfield that housed a significant portion of Russia’s strategic bomber fleet. Russia thus feels that its linchpin, and thus by extension its entire strategy in the Arctic, is vulnerable and under increased pressure from an arguably self-imposed NATO expansion.

Implications for NATO

Given the region’s arguably unique importance to Russia at both an economic and strategic level, NATO cannot simply redeploy the model of deterrence and force structure it has utilised on its Eastern flank in the Baltics for example. A more assertive deterrence strategy that includes the deployment of precision-strike weaponry to Northern Finland could have serious unintended strategic consequences such as nuclear brinkmanship from Russia and the development of a more pre-emptive and first strike nuclear doctrine. In the face of increased vulnerability, Russia is already carrying out aggressive hybrid acts and posturing in the region. Seabed warfare activities such as the disruption of critical undersea infrastructure has become routine, especially in the Baltic, whilst GPS jamming originating from Russia has increasingly become an issue in Northern Norway and Finland. Deterrence should and needs to be strengthened in the Arctic, but it must go hand in hand with a holistic de-escalatory approach that understands and appreciates the region's unique challenges and risks.

A starting point could be restoring and expanding military-to-military communication channels between all North European states and Russia as a way to communicate intentions and mitigate escalation risks. Further tensions could be alleviated by slowing re-engaging with Russia over key Arctic issues such as fisheries, accidents and environmental challenges through the Arctic Council. The source of tensions in the region also highlights the urgent need for a new round of arms limitation treaties such as the now defunct Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty which eliminated all ground-launched conventional and nuclear missiles with ranges of 500-5,500kms.

Overall, the Arctic and especially the Kola peninsula represents a new frontier for NATO. In order to defend not only its member states but also strategic stability, it needs to tread carefully.