Norway’s military ties with Russia in Arctic waters are facing a real setback after two decades of positive developing spirit of cooperation in the north.
A planning conference ahead of the Northern Eagle exercise, supposed to take place next month, is cancelled until further notice. U.S. has already said “no” to participating after all military-to-military cooperation was frozen last week in a protest against Moscow’s actions in Ukraine.
In an e-mail to BarentsObserver, also Norway’s Defense Ministry’s spokeswoman Marita Isaksen Wangberg says the exercise will probably not take place.
“This is a trilateral exercise, and when the United States has frozen its bilateral military cooperation with Russia until further notice, the result is that this exercise probably will not be completed as planned in May. This also means that the planning conference which is scheduled for late March, early April until further notice has been suspended.”
Norwegian warships participated in the Northern Eagle exercise first time in 2008. The other joint Norwegian, Russian naval exercise in northern waters is the Pomor. This bi-annual exercise normally focuses on search- and rescue, anti-piracy and anti-terrorist operation is scheduled for 2015.
So far, no official comments have come from the Russian navy over the cancelation of the trilateral Northern Eagle exercise.
