(in Finland): – It is strange to sit in Kirkenes today and think that we sat in a pub just over the border in Zapolyarny and chatted with soldiers who may not be alive today.
So says editor and journalist in the online newspaper The Independent Barents Observer (BO), Thomas Nilsen.
For him and his colleagues in the border town, it was not at all unusual to take the hour-long drive east to one of the Russian border towns to have a “Friday game”.
– Like many others, we were over in Nikel and Zapoljarnyj as colleagues at both Friday parties and Christmas parties, says colleague and general manager of the newspaper, Atle Staalesen.
The tradition of going over to Russia for harry trades or Friday parties came to an abrupt end for most people in Kirkenes and East Finnmark when Russia invaded Ukraine on 24 February last year.
But Staalesen and Nilsen began to see the contours several years ago.
A year of war
February 24 marks one year since Russia invaded Ukraine. In the article series One year of war, we tell the stories about how the war has affected the local community and the local population in Sør-Varanger, Norway’s only border municipality to the giant in the east.
The International Churches
It is around 60 kilometers from the center of Kirkenes to the nearest Russian border towns.
When the borders began to become more open between Norway and Russia in the late 1980s, there was also more contact between the neighboring countries. Barents cooperation began to flourish, and eventually it became quite common for Norwegians to travel across the border for trade, entertainment and to conduct business.
– It was an exciting concept. It was the international Kirkenes – educational and fun, and very different, says Thomas Nilsen.
Many went on weekend trips to Murmansk, which is around three hours away, to stay in hotels, eat and shop.
– It was not unusual at all. A weekend trip to Murmansk to go to a nightclub was not far from taking the Danish boat to Copenhagen, says the BO editor.
– Driver went on a round trip
Such trips were also a natural part of life for BO journalists and the rest of the media community in Kirkenes. For colleagues from the south, it was an experience out of the ordinary.
– We tried to the best of our ability to go and experience things. We met people from local Russian newspapers, went to a museum, went for walks and went up to the ski slope, Nilsen continues.
Staalesen and Nilsen suspect that they became the talk of the town among the Russian border guards, because they often only managed to get to the border station in the count’s time.
– We tried to the best of our ability to get back before the border closed. Sometimes we barely made it! We got quite a reputation among the border guards, laughs Nilsen.
– Who took on the driver’s responsibility?
– It went round and round, laughs Staalesen.
Drank beer with Russian soldiers
As Nilsen was initially aware of, it was also not unusual to meet soldiers from the 200th motorized infantry brigade from Petsjenga. Parts of the brigade has participated in the invasion of Ukraineand has suffered loss of both personnel and material.
Some of these soldiers may have been met by Nilsen and Staalesen at the pub in Zapolyarny, when they still had the opportunity to cross over.
– They sat at the next table, and it was completely natural. They were interested in who we were, and we thought it was exciting to hear about what it was like to be a soldier in Petsjenga. It was a bit informal, really, says Nilsen.
As BO itself has reported via open sources, between 500-600 soldiers from the Petsjenga brigade have been killed in the last eleven months.
– Many of them were killed at the very beginning, around March. But there are no official statistics on that, says Nilsen.
Due to the losses, Nilsen and Staalesen consider Russia’s threat to Finnmark to be greatly reduced.
– It is because they have had both the number of soldiers and the number of armored vehicles reduced.
Began to sense the contours
It was in 2013 that the BO duo began to sense the contours of a more authoritarian and contained Russia. It was the year before the Crimean peninsula was declared its own by the great power.
– Then the tightening had begun, and the border guards were less compliant. The rules for how one could travel in the border zone changed, says the editor.
The Russian government also began to tighten its grip on media freedom, declaring NGOs to be “foreign agents” – that is, an enemy of the state.
– It suddenly started to go in a very anti-democratic direction, but we would not have thought that it would get so bad that people start talking about a new iron curtain.
Shut out
In 2016, Thomas Nilsen became banned from Russia, and he hasn’t been there since. He was stopped at the border on his way into the country, and was told by the FSB that as a journalist he posed a threat to the security of the federation.
– So this was not a change from 24 February, but something that happened over many years. We would like to be there several times after 2016, says Atle Staalesen, who was last in Murmansk in December 2016.
The Friday party and cultural exchange in Russia thus came to an abrupt end for the colleagues. They both hope to cross the border again, but admit that the probability of that happening in the first place is rather low.
– When Vladimir Putin and the bandits around him are in prison, the Barents Observer is ready to establish a local office in Murmansk. But there is nothing to indicate that it will be tomorrow, says Thomas Nilsen.
Here, Russians in exile and Ukrainians on the run work together against Putin: – I’m very glad she doesn’t see us as enemies
