Despite the invasion of Ukraine, Russia remains a threat to other countries, including NATO countries. This is stated in the Norwegian intelligence report as of 2023, his presented February 13.
“Russia remains the biggest nuclear threat to NATO. Continued tensions between Russia and the West mean that Russia will continue to pose the biggest nuclear threat to NATO, and therefore to Norway. It is possible that a local war will escalate into a larger conflict, in which Russia, the United States, NATO and Norway will directly participate militarily,” the report says.
At the same time, Norwegian intelligence believes that the Russian nuclear arsenal will not undergo significant changes in the coming years and will be “maintained, modernized and developed.”
The report also called Russia an “increasingly unpredictable neighbor” for Norway.
“Russia’s instability also means that Russian decision-making processes regarding Norway and nearby Norwegian territories are becoming less predictable. In Moscow, Norway is seen more as part of a western and aggressive community and less as a neighboring country with which Russia’s interests intersect.” “, the document says.
Norwegian intelligence chief Niels Andreas Stensones said Barents Observer that because of the war with Ukraine, there is no threat to important parts of Russia’s military potential. According to him, the strategic forces located on the Kola Peninsula of the Russian Federation (which has a common border with Norway and Finland) remained “more or less intact”: nuclear weapons, submarines, ships of the Navy, long-range air defense and electronic warfare.
Stensones believes that the factor of nuclear weapons “will play a more prominent role” in Russia’s regional defense compared to conventional weapons, which means that in this region, including near Norway, “the threshold for nuclear escalation will decrease.”
The Norwegian Security Police Service (RST) in its annual report notes that after a sharp reduction in Russian oil and gas exports to Europe, Norway, as a major supplier of these resources, may come under Russian “pressure”, the publication reported. Hamar Arbeiderblad .
Nevertheless, the special service calls sabotage on the territory of Norway unlikely in 2023, but the issue is updated in the event of an aggravation of the conflict between the Russian Federation and the West, RST believes. Both physical acts and “digitally” are called probable, and in such a way that it will be difficult to determine who is behind it.
After Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, representatives of the Russian political community spoke several times about the possibility of using nuclear weapons. In particular, on September 21, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced his readiness to use nuclear weapons in case of a threat to the territorial integrity of Russia.
President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky said he did not believe that the Russian Federation would use nuclear weapons.
On October 27, during a speech at the Valdai discussion club, Putin said that Russia “never spoke” about the possible use of its nuclear weapons, but “only answered with hints.”
On January 1, 2023, during a telethon, a representative of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine, Vadym Skibitsky, reported that Ukrainian intelligence is constantly monitoring the movement of all nuclear weapons carriers in Russia.
