The Arctic has become increasingly important to British security, as Russia reopens military bases there and bolsters its troops on the border with Nato member, Finland.
Now, a new interview reveals that in 2016, the UK turned down an opportunity to purchase a foothold in the Arctic that would have given it increased influence and strategic capabilities in the High North.
Civil servants ‘pushed back’ plan to buy Arctic land
“[Arctic security] came up when Boris Johnson was Foreign Secretary, and I was Foreign Minister, and I tried to get him to buy a bit of Svalbard,” Ellwood said.
MP Tobias Ellwood was a minister in the Foreign Office and Ministry of Defence, and said he proposed purchasing land in the Arctic to give the UK a strategic foothold. (Photo: Chris J Ratcliffe/Getty)
Ellwood said it would “certainly have been useful to have assets there, to monitor traffic” and operate satellites, to track the Russian threat.
“Norway is a close ally, there’s no doubt about it, but this was a wonderful opportunity, which sadly we did miss.”
US President Donald Trump is continuing his efforts to acquire Greenland, an autonomous Arctic island which is territorially part of Denmark, either through purchase or military force.
Trump said the US “needs Greenland for international security” and is also likely to be interested in the mining potential across the island.
What are the Svalbard islands and why do they matter?
The Svalbard achipelago is a group of islands in the Arctic Ocean.
Situated north of Norway, east of Greenland and west of Russia, Svalbard is home to around 2,500 people.
Several settlements on Svalbard are populated by Russians and a Lenin statue still stands in an abandoned coal mining town.
Under the 1920 Svalbard Treaty, to which the UK is a signatory, Norway has sovereignty over the archipelago, but 48 countries can exploit its natural resources. This includes Russia; the only country other than Norway which uses this right.
The treaty also made Svalbard demilitarised and visa free.
Then-Conservative leader David Cameron visited Svalbard in 2006 to promote environmentalism.
Longyearbyen, located on Spitsbergen island in the Svalbard Archipelago. (Photo: Jonathan Nackstrand/ AFP)Its important strategic position, which is passed by Russia’s ships as they travel to the Atlantic Ocean, means it has become a flashpoint for tensions between the Kremlin and Nato.
In 2022, one of two subsea data cables connecting the Svalbard archipelago and the Norwegian mainland was damaged, which a UK peer said “demonstrated the capabilities of a hostile actor”.
In the same year, Norway tried to block Russian ships heading for Svalbard’s second largest city of Barentsburg as part of economic sanctions.
Two years later Russia installed Soviet flags in the city and announced the opening of a scientific centre for polar research.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov has said that “the Arctic is a zone of our national interests, our strategic interests.”
Amid concerns about Russian activity in the area, Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre has said that “Svalbard is Norway, and Svalbard is safe.”
It received interest from a Chinese billionaire before being acquired by the Norweigen state for €26 million.
Another Svalbard island came up for sale in 2024, but a Foreign Office source said there had been no discussion of purchasing it at that time.
However, the Chair of the UK Space Agency said that Svalbard is already “one of the most active centres for the collection of satellite data anywhere in the world and an intense scene of strategic competition.”
“Considering seven of the eight Arctic Council members are Nato allies, and rely on UK diplomatic and military support, it would have taken potentially a little while but the UK could probably have got membership, depending on the rules of admission,” he said.
Russia has become increasingly aggressive in the Arctic, alarming Scandinavian neighbours. Russian President Vladimir Putin is pictured here visiting the polar camp at Alexandra Land Island, Franz Josef Land in Arctic Russia, in 2017. (Photo: Mikhail Svetlov/Getty Images)
“In terms of our science and technology posture, we do co-operate on the main island of Svalbard anyway, as do the Russians and the Chinese, because states use science and technology and climate as a softer way of getting a foothold into the Arctic which has diplomatic cover rather than military.”
Arctic a ‘direct threat to the UK’
Ellwood said the Arctic was a “huge issue, and one that for a long time has been recognised as an area where European, and British particularly, security, could be vulnerable.”
“Ultimately, this is testing Nato, because it’s a new geographical domain we’ve not really got our heads around. Russia is advancing at an incredible rate of knots and therefore there’s a greater responsibility to hold Russia in check, not just in Ukraine, not just on the Finnish border, but also at sea as well.”
“It’s from the submarines emanating from the Arctic, coming round through Murmansk, through the Norwegian coastline and into the North Sea. So it’s a direct threat to the UK.”
Scientists at work around the Svalbard archipelago. (Photo: Sebnem Coskun/Anadolu via Getty Images)Arnold said that Nato and the UK “absolutely” needed to take the region more seriously.
“The Arctic has completely, fundamentally changed; politically, militarily and soon geographically, as ice melts and resource extraction is able to take hold.”
A Scandinavian defence insider said that there were concerns about the Russian settlement in Svalbard and that the region “really welcomes the co-operation we have with the UK and the US in the Arctic.”
“The United Kingdom’s importance for Norwegian security is increasing and co-operation has accelerated further, in line with the United Kingdom’s greater emphasis on the North Atlantic, Northern Europe and the High North,” it says.
A view of glaciers in Svalbard and Jan Mayen in July 2024. (Photo: Sebnem Coskun/Anadolu via Getty Images)There was little mention of the Arctic before 2010, “a paragraph” in 2015 and then a policy framework for UK Defence’s approach to the Arctic in 2022, which made the Arctic the only region to have its own geographic policy document.
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Read MoreHowever, Arnold said the UK had been “timid” in its approach, avoiding “overstepping the mark” because it was not an Arctic state.
“If you look at the last 15 years it has absolutely accelerated. But what we’re not seeing is that level of sort of strategic intent and view on the Arctic matched by resources, because we don’t have infinite resources.”
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