War may be far away but tensions from the Ukraine conflict are causing an unprecedented chill in a remote Arctic town where Russian and Ukrainian coalminers have worked side by side for decades
A man wearing an anorak with the logo of Arktikugol company on the back walks in the blizzard on May 7, 2022, in the miners' town of Barentsburg, on the Svalbard Archipelago, northern Norway.​ (Credits: Jonathan NACKSTRAND / AFP)
Barentsburg, Norway: War may be far away but tensions from the Ukraine conflict are causing an unprecedented chill in a remote Arctic town where Russian and Ukrainian coalminers have worked side by side for decades.
In Barentsburg, in Norway's Svalbard archipelago, relics of a bygone era—a bust of Lenin, a sculpture with Cyrillic script declaring "Our goal - Communism"—bear witness to Russia's longstanding presence.
The town's population peaked at around 1,500 in the 1980s, but shrank after the Soviet Union collapsed.
Now, some 370 people live here, two-thirds of them Ukrainians—most from the Russian-speaking eastern Donbas region—and the remainder Russians.