Britain considered buying remote Arctic territory for £250m to counter Russian threat ...Middle East

The UK Government considered buying a stretch of remote territory in the Arctic to expand its presence in the region, The i Paper can reveal.

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.

The Government is now trying to bolster its presence in the Arctic, with a renewed partnership with Norway, and the Foreign Secretary visiting the region this week.

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

The then-foreign minister Tobias Ellwood told The i Paper that he proposed the purchase of a stretch of land in Norway’s Svalbard archipelago when it was on sale for £250m.

“[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.

“Svalbard is a group of islands and they’re quite strategically important. We were ahead of our time and pushed back by civil service and others.”

Ellwood said it would “certainly have been useful to have assets there, to monitor traffic” and operate satellites, to track the Russian threat.

“For different reasons, it made sense for us to establish a base there, and sadly, it was never to be,” he said.

“Norway is a close ally, there’s no doubt about it, but this was a wonderful opportunity, which sadly we did miss.”

“This is exactly why Trump wants to buy Greenland, because the growing disorder we’re seeing is seeing every country defend their immediate surrounds.”

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.

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.”

The available piece of territory appears to have been Austre Adventfjord, a piece of land across the fjord from the Svalbard town of Longyearbyen, which was put on sale by the Norwegian Horn family in 2016.

It received interest from a Chinese billionaire before being acquired by the Norweigen state for €26 million.

The Foreign Office did not deny that discussions had taken place over Ellwood’s recommendation in 2016.

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.

The current Government is understood to believe it would not give the UK a strategic advantage because the Svalbard Treaty restricts the military use of the land, and did not want to try and obtain it because it is an ally’s sovereign territory.

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.”

Ed Arnold, a Senior Research Fellow for European Security at defence think-tank Rusi, said that purchasing land in Svalbard would technically make the UK an Arctic state, boosting its diplomatic prominence in the region and giving it an argument to join the Arctic Council.

“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.

While bringing diplomatic benefits, Arnold said the plan to buy land would have little military advantage, because the amount of infrastructure needed to maintain a UK station permanently would mean it made more financial sense to operate those capabilities on the mainland through allies.

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.”

Arnold said if the plan to buy land came as part of a wider strategy on the Arctic — to get the UK on the Arctic Council, paired with the creation of a specific Arctic ambassador and a more focused ministerial brief — “it could potentially have been worthwhile to pursue more strongly”.

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.”

“The significance of the Arctic is all the more important because of the melting ice caps. It’s going to become ever busier… Because this is new and unfolding, Russia has been quick to plant flags in the sea, making territorial claims.”

“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.”

Should Nato — and by extension, the UK — enter a war with Russia, “the only way that the Russians can actually target the UK is from the north”, Arnold said.

“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.”

“It’s also a threat for Nato more broadly. If the US is going to reinforce Europe, like we all hope it will, then the US forces have to get from the US over to Europe safely by ship and by plane. We have to protect those sea lanes.”

Arnold said that Nato and the UK “absolutely” needed to take the region more seriously.

“The Russians prioritised the Arctic from the 2010s and really, Nato sort of de-prioritised it after the Cold War. It noticed what Russia was doing, but didn’t really respond to it, because they don’t want to provoke Russia,” he said.

“The Arctic has completely, fundamentally changed; politically, militarily and soon geographically, as ice melts and resource extraction is able to take hold.”

The UK this week announced new efforts to detect hostile state activity in the Arctic using AI.

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 Norwegian Defence Pledge from 2024 describes the UK as “Norway’s most important European ally.”

“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)

Arnold said that the UK had become increasingly focused on the Arctic throughout different governments, but that more needed to be done.

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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The document does not mention the Svalbard islands, but does note that developments in the High North “impact upon our environment, prosperity, energy supply, and security”.

However, Arnold said the UK had been “timid” in its approach, avoiding “overstepping the mark” because it was not an Arctic state.

“The UK describes itself as the Arctic’s closest neighbour. I think the UK could do far more if it pushes that way and effectively gets the Arctic states or Arctic allies to pull it up. The UK can’t just go and operate there unilaterally. It has to be invited, but it should push for more invitations.

“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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