SAN FRANCISCO
Lee Heidhues 9.3.2026
Norway certainly is ready, willing and able to assert its territorial rights and is willing to enforce an international Court order even if the defendant is the mighty Russian power at its border.
Excerpted from The New York Times 9.3.2026
Norway Seizes Russian Ship, Testing Moscow in the High Arctic
Empowered by an international court order, Norway captured the vessel as part of a global effort to seize Russian assets. The Russians called it “piracy.”
For the past several days, Norwegian security services had been tracking a Russian research ship.
It was cruising around Svalbard, an icy archipelago high in the Arctic near the North Pole that Norway controls but is governed by a one-of-a-kind treaty that gives the Russians access.
On Wednesday, the Norwegians pounced.
Armed with a court order that is part of a global effort to recover Russian assets, Norwegian police officers boarded the ship while it was docked in Barentsburg, a tiny Russian outpost in Svalbard. The officers confronted the captain of the ship, a somewhat clunky, 200-foot-long oceanographic vessel, and announced that they were “arresting” it.
The seized ship was part of a broader effort to enforce an international court judgment ordering Russia to pay a Ukrainian energy company, Naftogaz, more than $4 billion for expropriating that company’s assets in Crimea. The ship, owned by the Russian government and called Professor Molchanov, after a famous Russian scientist, is now prohibited from leaving Barentsburg until Norwegian courts decide what to do next.
“We have only acted as a messenger,” said Lars Fause, the governor of Svalbard.
Norway’s proposed fence along Russian border
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