The accusations came from several circles, including the chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Russian House of Lords, Konstantin Kosachev.

According to Kosachev, the Norwegian authorities justified the blockade by referring to the sanctions imposed on Russia after the invasion of Ukraine.

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Kosachev accused Norway of violating international obligations enshrined in the 1920 Svalbard Treaty.

E24 wrote earlier this month that Norway had stopped shipping 7 tonnes of food to Russian miners in Spitsbergen at the Storskog border station. From there, the food will be brought to Troms and loaded onto ships.

The Consul General of Russia in Svalbard, Sergei Gushchin, informs RIA Novosti that negotiations are ongoing.

– There are now ongoing consultations between the Russian and Norwegian sides, both in Moscow and Oslo, about bringing goods to Spitsbergen, he said.

“Norway clearly didn’t consider that by banning ground transportation, they were also banning the delivery of goods to Svalbard, which actually indirectly broke the spirit of the treaty from 1920 that clarified the principle of non-discrimination in the supply of goods,” he told Russian TV Channel Russia 24.

“Of course, I don’t want to speculate about possible retaliatory measures on our part, but I do want to say that we will provide an adequate answer for any violation of the Svalbard Agreement,” he said.

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Confirmed exception

The treaty gives Norway full sovereignty over Svalbard, but at the same time requires Norwegian authorities to treat citizens of all countries equally.

Foreign Minister Anniken Huitfeldt (Labor Party) confirmed in late April that an exception would be made by Norway for the carriage of goods destined for Russian nationals in Svalbard.

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– We made one exception, and that is for Svalbard, because there we have the Svalbard Agreement. Those who have signed it will be treated the same, he added NRK.

NTB has asked the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for comments on this matter, but has not yet received a response.

Russian Hacking

On Wednesday, several Norwegian sites were hit by a massive data attack, and among other things, the BankID site was down. Russian hacker group Killnet has taken responsibility and cited the transport blockade of Storskog for Russia in Svalbard as one of the reasons for the attack on the Norwegian website, according to digi.no. In Telegram, Killnet points out that Storskog in Finnmark is the only Norwegian-Russian border crossing and refers to the NRK feature where Huitfeldt states that “a special request for transport was denied on 15 June 2022”.

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– Killnet is a pro-Russian political hacker group that attacks new countries every week according to geopolitical developments, said technology manager Erling Schackt at Check Point Software Norway, one of the world’s largest IT security companies.

An attack on Monday and Tuesday paralyzed a number of public and private websites in Lithuania, according to the Baltic News Service. Even then, it was a denial of service attack. Among other things, tax and immigration authorities were affected.

The incident comes about a week after Russian officials threatened to retaliate against Lithuania’s decision to stop transporting Russian goods to Kaliningrad, a Russian enclave surrounded by NATO countries.

– Yesterday it was Lithuania, and last month they targeted Italy and Poland. The group claims to control 4.5 million botnets. If this is true, it is one of the largest active botnets in the world.

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(© NTB)