A Russian Navy warship fired warning shots at a Norwegian fishing vessel in the Arctic Ocean earlier this month, according to an account from the boat’s skipper. The Russian Udaloy class destroyer, Admiral Levchenko, was taking part in large-scale maneuvers off the Norwegian coast, a region of increasingly strategic importance to both Moscow and NATO.
The incident is said to have happened on September 12 when the 49-foot fishing boat MS Ragnhild Kristine was in the Norwegian exclusive economic zone (EEZ), north of Vardø, in the Barents Sea, off Norway’s northern coast.
The Norwegian vessel was fishing and had already been in contact with the Russian destroyer, via radio. As the boat’s captain explained to FriFagbevegelse, a Norwegian news website:
“I get called up on the radio. ‘This is Russian warship; you need to leave the area.’ I repeated that we should pull up our lines. Then the Russian warship comes at us at full speed…”
The Russian captain explained that the warship was taking part in a live-fire exercise, but his Norwegian counterpart refused to move.
The Norwegian captain continued:
“I look over my shoulder on the starboard side and the warship is coming towards us in full steam. The ship is 200 meters [650 feet] from us … It’s slightly threatening, you might say. They turn on the typhoon foghorn for about 15 seconds to get our attention. Then he fires a cannon somewhere in the sea. There’s a loud bang and the hull shakes violently.”
The fishing vessel was not hit and it’s unclear if the Russian warship fired a live round or an inert one. The crew of the fishing boat assessed that some kind of projectile came down in the water near their vessel and exploded.
The Admiral Levchenko is armed with two single 100mm AK-100 dual-purpose guns and four AK-630M 30mm Gatling-type guns for close-in defense. These are in addition to Rastrub anti-submarine missiles, Kinzhal short-range surface-to-air missiles, torpedoes, and RBU-6000 anti-submarine rocket launchers.
“After the bang, we agreed to go west. It was ‘voluntary coercion,’ as it was called when I was in the military,” the Norwegian captain explained. “He led us all the way out of the field. The Norwegian Coast Guard also came down and talked to the Russians.”
A spokesperson for the Norwegian Joint Headquarters said that a radio conversation took place between the vessels but said it was not able to confirm that a warning shot was fired.
Regardless, Russian live-fire exercises in these waters are not unheard of and are announced in advance, however, Norwegian commercial vessels don’t necessarily have to leave the EEZ — which is in international waters — during military exercises. In the past, this has led to consternation from Norwegian fishermen, due to the potential risks as well as lost revenues.
In this case, however, the crew of the Ragnhild Kristine says they didn’t receive the usual warning, which would be provided by the Norwegian authorities.
The Admiral Levchenko was underway as part of the Okean 24 naval exercise. These drills date back to the Cold War era and the latest iteration was claimed to be the biggest of its kind in 30 years. According to Russian accounts, over 400 warships and 120 aircraft were used, and China also participated.
While the Okean 24 exercises are nothing new, it’s reported that these maneuvers are being run closer to Norway and now involve a greater degree of live firing than they did in the past, especially since Russia began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
The announcement of the incident also comes just a month after it was revealed that one of Norway’s most strategic air bases was the target of sabotage, earlier this year. According to reports, a critical communications cable associated with Evenes Air Station, in northern Norway, was severed in April and is now being investigated.
The incident at Evenes was announced amid increasing warnings about nefarious Russian activity in Europe, part of an apparent wave of ‘hybrid warfare’ as the conflict in Ukraine further stokes East-West tensions.
With its strategic position in the far north of Europe, Norway, a NATO member, is very much on the front line of some of these tensions.
The country has previously also had encounters with the Russian military. Back in 2018, the Norwegian Intelligence Service (NIS) disclosed three separate instances where Russian aircraft had flown mock attack profiles against a secretive radar station in the northern part of the country. The year before that, the NIS blamed Russian jamming for disruptions in cell phone and GPS service in the region, though it said this was a byproduct of an exercise and not a deliberate attack.
Norway’s geopolitical significance has been recognized by the U.S. military as it intensifies its focus on the strategically important Arctic region. This has included the deployment of U.S. Air Force bombers to Norway, which happened for the first time in 2021, as you can read about here.
As part of its 2020 Arctic Strategy, the U.S. Air Force is looking to bolster its presence in the region to counter the threat posed by Russia. The wider region has been identified as a potential flashpoint, as climate change sees a scramble to secure the potential wealth offered by natural resources, as well as new maritime trade routes that are no longer constrained by year-round sea ice.
For Russia, the region is also home to its largest and most important naval force, the Northern Fleet, which includes the majority of the country’s nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines.
Exercises like Okean 24 also practice defending Russian nuclear submarines, ensuring they can leave their ports and go on patrol as a critical part of the country’s strategic deterrent.
This factor has been reflected in generally increased Russian submarine activity in the Barents Sea and the Arctic region, as well as the Atlantic, in recent years. In 2020, the U.S. Navy took the unusual step of releasing a number of pictures of its nuclear attack submarine USS Seawolf, which surfaced in a fjord near Tromsø, Norway, for what was at the time a very rare public appearance in Scandinavia.
For its part, Russia established a new Northern Fleet Joint Strategic Command in 2014, which is responsible for the Arctic, North Atlantic, and Scandinavian regions. It includes the Northern Fleet, assets of which are concentrated on the Kola Peninsula, as well as military garrisons, and airbases.
Moscow has also been using increasingly bold rhetoric when it comes to the Arctic. Just last week, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov warned that “the Arctic is not the territory of the North Atlantic alliance” and that Moscow was “fully ready to defend its interests” there.
With that in mind, the reported incident of September 12, pitting a Norwegian fishing boat against a Russian Navy destroyer, is very much indicative of the potential for flashpoints and aggression in this increasingly contested part of the world.
Contact the author: thomas@thewarzone.com