NORWEGIAN JOURNALIST THOMAS NILSEN WAS CROSSING from Norway into Russia for work on March 8, 2017 when the Russian FSB guards at the Borisoglebsk border station informed him that he was a threat to the national security of the Russian Federation and denied him entry.
Nilsen is a respected journalist and expert on the Arctic and Russia. He runs the international news service the Independent Barents Observer and is one of Norway’s leading experts on Russia’s nuclear submarines.1 Nilsen lives in Kirkenes, a quiet harbor town on a rocky peninsula in the northeastern most corner of Norway. He had passed through the same border station countless times without incident, since the days when the border guards still represented the Soviet Union.
Nilsen was traveling that day with a delegation from the Danish parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee, who he was supposed to guide to Murmansk, the world’s largest city above the Arctic Circle.
Russia’s Murmansk region, on the rugged shores of the Arctic Ocean, is strategically important for the Kremlin. During the Cold War, it was the hot spot for the Soviet Union’s nuclear submarines and icebreakers. Today, the naval base in Murmansk hosts Russia’s Northern Fleet. The majority of the country’s nuclear submarines are based in the area. The Putin regime has high ambitions for the Arctic Ocean, especially its vast oil and gas fields and shipping routes. In Putin’s plan to conquer the Arctic, Murmansk is the key location.
Nilsen’s experience at Borisoglebsk started out as routine. The FSB immigration officer took his passport, typed his details into the computer, and asked the mandatory question: Where was Nilsen traveling to?
“To Murmansk,” he replied.
The FSB officer continued: “What will you do there?”
“Make reports,” Nilsen answered.
Typically, a foreign reporter crossing the border to work in northwest Russia is checked by two separate FSB immigration officials. Following protocol, the first official called in his supervisor. But as soon as the supervisor glanced at the computer screen, the routine check was over. He took Nilsen’s passport, politely asked him to step out of the queue, and escorted him to the back office. Nilsen guessed that he might be in for the familiar fate of many reporters: he would be forced to answer more questions concerning the purpose of his trip, before being allowed to enter Russia.
In the office, three FSB officers advised Nilsen to take a seat. Then the news was delivered, in Russian: Nilsen would not be allowed to enter the country. The reason given was “state security.”
Nilsen asked why he was considered a threat to Russia’s national security. The officers claimed not to know. Instead, they encouraged Nilsen to contact the Russian consulate general in Kirkenes for further information.
Nilsen was told that his ban would be in effect for five years. (Only later did he find out that it would be enforced indefinitely.) If he tried entering Russia through any checkpoint, he would be considered a criminal offender.
Still acting politely and professionally, the officials handed Nilsen a document detailing the conditions of his ban. Nilsen was asked to sign the papers, leave the border station, and return to Norway. “Judging by their uniform insignia, the officers were high-ranking,” Nilsen remembers.
Nilsen’s Danish travel companions were allowed to enter Russia. But Nilsen had to hitchhike two hundred yards back to the Norwegian side of the checkpoint, because walking is prohibited in the border zone. The FSB officials specifically forbade him to hitchhike in a Russian vehicle.
After a five-minute wait, a Norwegian driver on a trip to get gas picked Nilsen up and drove him home to Kirkenes.
Officially declaring someone a national security threat to Russia is a serious accusation. By definition, “state security threats” in Russia include crimes such as engaging in espionage or terrorism. Nilsen had not spied or plotted terror attacks against Russia.
Still, the travel ban wasn’t a complete surprise. Before the border incident, Nilsen and his fellow journalists had been the target of multiple hostile operations from Russia. The ban would seriously hinder Nilsen’s ability to cover Russia-related news topics going forward. It appeared that his ideals of independent, high-quality reporting had clashed profoundly with the Kremlin’s infamous security structures. “The Kremlin views many journalists as a threat to the FSB’s understanding of state security,” Nilsen says. “Journalism is the cornerstone of all developing societies, thus from the FSB’s viewpoint, journalism threatens Russia’s national security. Up here in the Arctic, journalism is essential in building good relations across borders. Maybe the FSB doesn’t want that.”
Nilsen decided to discover why he was considered a security threat to the Russian Federation. In order to find out, and to attempt and reverse the shady travel ban, he saw only one option—to sue the entity that had implemented the ban: the FSB.
Norway routinely ranks among the top nations in global indexes measuring democracy and freedom of the press. Stable and safe, the country guarantees excellent working conditions to news platforms, such as Thomas Nilsen and his colleague Atle Staalesen’s Independent Barents Observer. “Self-censorship is the only thing we never bring with us inside the office. It’s not allowed through the door,” Nilsen told me at the paper’s newsroom in Kirkenes. On the wall hangs a map showing the vast area covered by the Observer: the northernmost parts of Norway, Russia, Finland, and Sweden, which form a region called the Barents, and, on top of it, the Arctic Ocean. Between Kirkenes and the North Pole lies over 3000 kilometers of lethally cold sea. Midway from the newsroom to the North Pole is the icy, stunningly beautiful and demilitarized Norwegian archipelago Svalbard.
Nilsen and Staalesen, friends for over twenty years, initially moved to Kirkenes, a harbor town of a few thousand inhabitants, because of its proximity to Russia. Street signs in the town are written in both Norwegian and Russian. However, scratch Kirkenes’s tranquil surface, and high-stakes political tension is exposed.
Since the 1960s, Norway has harvested its riches from the oil and gas fields of the country’s continental shelf, which flank the mainland and extend to the Barents Sea, adjacent to Kirkenes. The wise use of oil export revenues has been an important factor in creating one of the world’s wealthiest and corruption-free countries. Unlike most European nations bordering Russia, Norway enjoys total independence from Russian energy. However, Rosneft, the Russian state-owned oil giant, has long been looking to get its hands on Norway’s oil. Because of this, Nilsen says that “Kirkenes is a gold mine for investigative journalists.”
That’s why in 2002, sitting at Staalesen’s kitchen table, the two friends decided to establish their first online news service, which they called the Barents Observer.2 They wanted to publish news about the Arctic, and decided to focus on the region’s energy industry, as well as on economic, political, and environmental topics.
Cooperation among citizens is an essential value in the Barents region. Originally, this relationship took shape as a way to support democracy, human rights, and freedom of the press, especially in the former Soviet Union. In 1993, after the Soviet Union fell, the Barents area representatives signed a cooperation treaty in Kirkenes; in the wake of dramatic changes in world politics, the inhabitants wanted to strengthen their ties and secure stability in the area. Nilsen and Staalesen established their website to fulfill that same need. “Russians, Norwegians, Finns, and Swedes live close to each other. But culture-wise, economically, societally, and ethnically, people living on different sides of the Barents countries’ borders differ remarkably. We wanted to increase understanding between the people,” Staalesen shares.
Nilsen and Staalsen built the Barents Observer on the idea of transparency and the free flow of information. All sources were identified in their stories; anonymous sources were avoided to ensure legitimacy and credibility. “By showing our sources, we allowed the readers to assess the articles’ credibility and trustworthiness themselves,” Nilsen says. “And by being open, we thought the FSB might even learn a thing or two about the Norwegian value of free access to knowledge and information. Maybe we were naive.”
The site’s expertise in Arctic, and specifically, Russian affairs, the defense industry, security, and nuclear safety were highly appreciated among the journalists in the region. According to Nilsen and Staalesen, none of their investigations could be labeled as “too sensitive” and thus irritating to the Kremlin. Quite the opposite: not once did they disclose Russian state secrets or other data compromising the country’s national security.
Over time, the two men developed and grew their news service. In 2005, when diplomatic relations between Russia and other Barents countries were seemingly stable, Staalesen received a job offer from The Norwegian Barents Secretariat, whose mission is to promote and carry out commercial collaborations between Russia and Norway.3 The secretariat, based in Kirkenes, is owned and led by three northern counties of Norway, Nordland, Troms, and Finnmark. The decision makers behind the secretariat are local politicians and governors. The group receives funding from the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Since 2000, the secretariat has funded thousands of transborder projects, including ones involving the Norwegian state oil company Equinor, formerly known as Statoil, and Rosneft.4
After Staalesen accepted the offer, ownership of the Barents Observer was transferred to the secretariat. At first, the news service and its new owner worked together seamlessly to further grow the site. In the mid-2000s, there was little tension in Russian–Norwegian relations, and the secretariat felt that the news site helped to advance the connections between the countries in the area. The journalists decided what the Barents Observer would cover.
In 2009, Nilsen was appointed editor in chief, and Trude Pettersen joined the team as a reporter. New audiences throughout the Nordics and in Russia found the site. In Russia, the site drew readers especially from Murmansk and Petrozavodsk, near the Finnish border. Many articles were republished and disseminated in Russian media outlets, which back then were less tightly controlled by the Putin regime.
Nilsen and Staalesen have long covered Rosneft, the Russian oil giant. “History tells us that Rosneft is of utmost importance for the Kremlin,” Nilsen shares. He describes the corporation as vital to Russia’s activities in the region.
Rosneft is the biggest oil and gas company in Russia, and one of the largest publicly traded oil companies in the world. Many experts agree that Russia may be running out of cheap oil.5 As a result, it needs to pump oil from colder, deeper, and more remote places. Rosneft is therefore especially interested in expanding into Norway, where oil prospects are promising.
The company has served as a cash cow for Putin’s inner circle, the siloviki, or security service agents. Rosneft’s CEO is Putin’s trusted ally, Igor Sechin, who many consider the second most powerful person in Russia.6 Sechin has served in senior roles in both the Putin and Medvedev administrations, including as deputy prime minister.7 During his term as deputy prime minister, the FSB reportedly founded Department P, which was put in charge of industrial activities, especially the lucrative oil business.8 In the same year, 2004, Sechin was promoted to the chair of Rosneft’s management board. Two years later, Rosneft received additional muscle from FSB headquarters in Lubyanka, Moscow when the deputy director of the agency’s “oil division,” Andrey Patrushev Jr., started to work for the company.9
In Russia, many FSB officers—like KGB agents in Soviet times—are “seconded” to work in companies, receiving paychecks from both the FSB and the outside business.10 This system ensures that the companies staffed by FSB officers serve the interests not just of the shareholders, but also of the Putin regime.
Rosneft operates globally, including in Cuba, Canada, the United States, Brazil, Turkmenistan, Georgia, Belarus, Ukraine, Indonesia, and Iraq. To ensure their business dealings, the FSB operatives acting as oil company executives run aggressive influence operations targeting both key decision makers and the public. Once the energy deals are sealed, the siloviki-run Rosneft provides a direct channel into foreign countries’ internal energy affairs, such as prices and availability.
The Observer was the only media source that systematically followed every significant Rosneft-related development in the Arctic.11 As a result, Russian spies have long had Staalesen and Nilsen on their radar. On several occasions, as the men met their Russian sources in Murmansk, they realized they were being shadowed. “From time to time a man appeared and drank tea by a nearby table. Their point is to make themselves seen by us, and by our sources,” Nilsen explains. While the “tea drinkers” never caused much of a hassle, Nilsen and his colleagues nevertheless implemented stricter information security and source protections. Nowadays, they notify their contacts and interviewees that the information they share can be exposed as a result of hacks or communications breaches.
There are other potential factors why Nilsen and Staalsen are in the Kremlin’s crosshairs. One might be because their site publishes news in Russian, to Russian audiences. Putin’s regime has harnessed most media outlets in Russia as amplifiers of the government’s voice, leaving large chunks of the public without access to factual, Russian-language information concerning their political leaders. “In many cases, Russian security services don’t care what’s written about them in London. They care what’s published in Russia. And our news is widely read throughout northwestern Russia” Nilsen says.12
When reporting from Russia, Nilsen and his colleagues often raise issues that are blocked by the Kremlin-controlled media. For example, they provide a voice to non-governmental organizations who have run up against the Russian authorities, and interview local human rights activists and opposition politicians, as well as members of the Russian lesbian, gay, bi- and transgender communities. By providing a platform for these groups, the Observer’s interests profoundly cross those of the FSB.
Another reason why the Observer may have gained the attention of the Russian authorities was the paper’s role as an opinion leader, with its work often quoted by the international press. In the early days of the Syrian civil war, for example, the Barents Observer scooped a secret Russian civilian cargo shipment that had been transported from the Northern Fleet’s headquarters in Severomorsk to Syria.13 “Some of our articles might include sensitive issues, but generally we cover the wide picture, sometimes including military components,” Staalesen says. He mentions Russia’s big investments in its military in the immediate neighborhood of Norway and Finland. “We cover that. But we haven’t dug in too far. Far too little, actually,” Staalesen shares.
While this type of coverage may have contributed to the influence campaigns targeted at the Observer, it was a Russian diplomat’s open offensive against the paper—and specifically, an article that Nilsen had written—that drew the attention of the international community.
Less than a month after Russia illegally annexed Crimea in March 2014, Nilsen wrote an editorial titled “Barents Cooperation in Putin’s Dangerous New Era.”14
In the editorial, Nilsen analyzed the harm that Russian aggression had caused and would continue to cause the Barents region. The piece listed the Putin regime’s recent hostilities against Russian citizen organizations, opposition bloggers, and the media. Nilsen stated that the Kremlin’s aggressive tactics would result in an atmosphere that would cause institutions, businesses, state structures, and citizens to lose interest in cooperating with Russia. In addition, Russia’s activities could possibly undercut the stable cross-border relations built over twenty plus years in the region. Nilsen mentioned Russia’s annexation of Crimea twice in his editorial.
Almost three weeks after Nilsen’s editorial was published, in late April 2014, approximately 100 journalists from Sweden, Norway, Russia, and Finland traveled to Kirkenes for a conference. The Arctic journalism community, whose roots date back to the Soviet era, meets annually to discuss regional developments. Speakers outside the community are invited as well, to provide expertise and insights.
At the conference—the theme of which that year was freedom of speech—a Russian photojournalist shared his experience of being arrested by the police, first in Murmansk and later in Moscow. The Kirkenes police, as well as Norwegian county officials, also delivered presentations. The spirit was positive and constructive.
But the atmosphere changed dramatically when a Russian diplomat in Kirkenes, Consul General Mikhail Noskov, took the stage and delivered his remarks.15 Noskov attacked the Barents Observer mercilessly, specifically focusing on its reporting concerning Russia’s annexation of Crimea.16 Arrogantly, he stated, “We should all know, it was absolutely not an annexation, but a reunification.” Noskov also claimed that the Barents Observer’s coverage damaged the bilateral relations between Russia and Norway.17 He also said that the site could be perceived as representing the views of the Norwegian government.18 “Because the Barents Observer is owned and funded by the Secretariat, a governmental structure, the ownership and funding show in the journalistic content of the paper,” the Consul General asserted.
For over half an hour, Noskov captured the attention of the room full of reporters.
Tapani Leisti, a reporter from Yle, was present as the Russian diplomat made his accusations. In an article recounting the event, he wrote that, “According to the Russian consul, a better name for the news site would be ‘Russia Observer,’ because it writes much less about the other Barents-area countries than about Russia.”19 Leisti added that “Noskov declined to specify his accusations when the audience asked for them.”
As soon as Noskov finished, a Russian reporter stood up and disputed what he had said. Stirring up even more conflict, the consul general characterized the journalists’ questions as “provocations, which [he would] not answer.”
Then it was the turn of the accused, Thomas Nilsen, to respond. He stressed to the consul the basics of Western standards of freedom of speech and news reporting and clarified the ownership structure of the paper. “I said that the newsroom has the freedom to choose their own topics, and the consul general will never, ever have any control over them,” Nilsen recalls. “I also offered him the possibility to be interviewed or write his own opinion piece. He never replied to any of my remarks.”
Nilsen and Staalesen later realized that Noskov’s denunciation hadn’t been cooked up hastily that morning over a cup of coffee. Instead, the wording, the target of the criticism, and the arena had all been carefully chosen. It was evident that the diplomat wasn’t operating independently, but was fully supported by his supervisors in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Moscow. Most likely, Noskov’s bosses had at least read and approved the speech in advance, if not written it themselves.
The presentation triggered an extraordinary chain of events which ultimately led to the end of the original Barents Observer.
A month later, Thomas Nilsen and Atle Staalesen held their regular meeting with the owners of the Barents Observer, the Norwegian Barents Secretariat. The owners are mainly politicians: elected members of the regional county parliament and councils of the three northernmost Norwegian counties. Some engage in economic or business projects with Russian-based companies.
In the meeting, the owners questioned the journalistic independence of the Observer, practically repeating the vague accusations of the Russian consul general. The owners demanded that Nilsen and Staalesen guarantee that the site would never write anything jeopardizing the cooperation between Norway and Russia. “Having the owners tell us we shouldn’t cover certain topics was alarming,” Nilsen remembers.
No decisions were made during the meeting. But as a direct reaction to the Russian consul’s false claim that the Barents Observer represented the views of the Norwegian government, the owners asked Nilsen, Staalesen, and Pettersen to compile suggestions for reshuffling the paper’s organizational structure to give it more independence from the counties’ governance. According to the owners, this would strengthen the Observer’s position as a free and independent news site.
The staff acted as requested and started to brainstorm.
In August 2014, Rosneft started to explore four oil fields in a joint operation with Norwegian Equinor, then known as Statoil. The operation, named Pingvin (Penguin), was carried out on the Norwegian continental shelf, at a location described by Rosneft as the “most promising and prolific area of the Barents Sea.”20, 21
At the same time, Nilsen, Pettersen, and Staalesen were busy coming up with new organizational models to keep their owners happy. Among their proposals was anchoring the site formally with the journalistic ethics of the Norwegian media industry, and starting a new foundation or company which would bare sole responsibility for the Barents Observer’s news reporting.
They presented their ideas to the owners, who accepted them, agreeing to strengthen the journalistic underpinnings and provide more editorial independence to the site. “They wanted to clear all allegations of the Barents Observer being financed and thus controlled by the Norwegian state,” Nilsen says.
However, just when Nilsen, Pettersen, and Staalesen thought they could go back to focusing on covering the news, their next meeting with the owners, in February 2015, turned everything upside down, as their previously accepted ideas were now rejected. “We realized that this wasn’t happening by mistake or a political accident. It was part of a bigger plan to silence the Barents Observer,” shares Nilsen.
In the meantime, the Observer continued its publishing mission. In the spring of 2015, it broke another story that gained international interest. This story originated from Svalbard, a peaceful Norwegian archipelago.
Svalbard is home to polar bears, as well as a community of Norwegian arctic researchers and a settlement of about 500 Russian and Ukrainian coal workers. The Russian settlement, called Barentsburg, hosts a Russian consulate, the northernmost diplomatic mission in the world. Svalbard’s sovereignty is defined in the 1920 Svalbard Treaty, which states that it belongs to Norway. Since the Kremlin started to militarize the Arctic, it has regularly voiced difficulties accepting the Treaty. “As Russians don’t agree with Oslo’s understanding of the Svalbard Treaty, Norway’s relation with the Russians in Svalbard is probably the most sensitive issue we have in Norway,” Staalesen shares.
As part of Russia’s recent military expansion into the Arctic, the country has refurbished several Soviet-era bases. One of them is Nagurskoje, which is located near the Franz Josef Land archipelago, approximately 160 miles from the eastern point of Svalbard.22 The complex houses heavy equipment, aircraft, and advanced anti-aircraft missiles. Regular war drills are organized at the base.
In April 2015, Nilsen noticed that Dmitri Rogozin, who was then Russia’s deputy prime minister in charge of the country’s defense industry, was traveling to the North Pole. Rogozin is under sanctions by the United States, European Union and Norway for publicly calling for the annexation of Crimea. He has also gained international notoriety as an active social media user. On Twitter, Rogozin has wished for the Japanese to commit ritualistic suicide and threatened Hungary and Romania with bomber jets.23 Ukraine-related travel bans and sanctions against Russian officials sparked him to comment: “Tanks don’t need visas.”24
Nilsen caught Rogozin sharing the content of his travels on Instagram and Facebook, which revealed that he had stopped in Barentsburg on his way to the North Pole. The sanctions specifically forbid his entry into Norwegian territory. “We picked it up and wrote stories,” Nilsen says.25 “Our stories created international headlines. The Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs learned about the incident from us, as we called them for comment. Rogozin challenged Russia’s and Norway’s official relationship, knowing his trip was politically sensitive.” Norway’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs demanded an explanation for Rogozin’s trip from the Russian ambassador in Oslo.26
Rogozin tweeted links to the Barents Observer articles describing his sanctions breach and the Norwegian Foreign Ministry’s reaction to it. He commented that they were “just jealous [that] we were swimming at the North Pole” and “after the fight it’s too late to wave your fists.”27
Following that, another high-ranking Russian politician stirred the diplomatic pot further. The first deputy chairman of Russia’s State Duma’s committee on international affairs, Leonid Kalashnikov, questioned Norway’s sovereignty over Svalbard. “For Russia, the Barents Sea and the whole Arctic, this is the only, in fact, access, to two oceans. We should never be held accountable to anyone,” Kalashnikov said.28 Again, the Barents Observer reporting on this was picked up by the international media.
After the incident, Norway changed its immigration and aviation laws.29 Until Rogozin’s surprise visit to Svalbard, the names and passports of people entering the archipelago were not checked. But now, anyone entering Svalbard needs to inform immigration officials forty-eight hours before arrival. Russian aircraft landing in Svalbard must provide passenger lists.
Finally, in the spring of 2015, the Norwegian Barents Secretariat formally ruled that the Observer should not follow the Rights and Duties of the Editor. A joint agreement between the Association of Norwegian Editors and the Norwegian Media Business Association, the Rights and Duties of the Editor provides guidelines that establish and defend a paper’s “editorial independence from interference by [its] owners.”30 These guidelines are followed by all other Norwegian newsrooms. The unprecedented decision broke all over Norway, and abroad. Many throughout the industry questioned and condemned the ruling. But the massive public shaming didn’t move the secretariat to reconsider its decision. The order stayed in place.
As a result, Staalesen and Nilsen, together with Trude Pettersen and photographer Jonas Karlsbakk, published a statement in the Barents Observer. They wrote that the secretariat was threatening freedom of speech, violating basic journalistic ethics, and effectively imposing censorship.31 They informed their readers that from that moment on, the Barents Observer should no longer be considered an independent news source.
Following the public statement, the secretariat accused Nilsen of disloyalty, and rebuked him for publishing the statement without speaking to them first.
Over the summer of 2015, the situation remained fluid, as the politicians on the governing board of the secretariat were focused on the regional elections scheduled for September. Firing a chief editor before the elections would have damaged their campaigns. So they waited until the elections were over.
On September 28, 2015, the secretariat relieved Nilsen from his duties as editor in chief of the Barents Observer, effective immediately.32 In the dismissal letter, Nilsen was accused of acting disloyally and mismanaging his duties. Trude Pettersen was appointed the new editor in chief.
In response, the editorial staff wrote another statement, declaring that the owners were destroying the Observer’s thirteen-year history of safeguarding freedom of speech and the people’s right to information.
Nilsen’s sacking sparked renewed protests within the media. The Norwegian Union of Journalists promised to provide free legal assistance for Nilsen if he wished to sue the secretariat, as the firing appeared illegal. The Norwegian Foreign Ministry, the financier of the secretariat, voiced support for an independent Barents Observer, hoping that the “owners would work to build a constructive atmosphere.”
Then a journalist with NRK, the Norwegian broadcasting corporation, obtained a scoop. A high-profile Norwegian official, speaking anonymously, revealed that an FSB officer had specifically asked Norwegian officials to silence the Barents Observer. The official told NRK that the FSB had been unsatisfied with “the Barents Observer’s contributions to the relationship between Russia and Norway.”33 The source further speculated that the FSB had likely voiced similar views to other entities in Norway. When the Russian embassy in Oslo was asked for comment on the suspected FSB meddling, it told NRK that it would be “meaningless to comment on obviously false statements.”34
One of the county governors of the secretariat told the press that the idea of FSB meddling was “totally unknown and totally surprising.” According to him, the Barents Observer’s reporting about Russia had never been mentioned as an underlying reason for the decisions concerning the editorial freedom of the site.
The revelation that the FSB had met with Norwegian officials behind the scenes and asked them to close down the paper, combined with the Russian consul general’s attack against the Barents Observer the previous year in Kirkenes, raised concerns in Norway. Questions were asked as to whether Russian security officers had applied even greater and more systematic pressure to shut down the Observer.
Naturally, any shady contacts between Russian security services and regional or national Norwegian politicians are carefully hidden. The Kremlin’s toolbox includes a variety of measures designed to persuade targeted individuals: oppression, harassment, bribery, even extortion. According to the Finnish security service, Supo, the foreign intelligence services cultivate their targets for years, slowly gaining their trust.35 Therefore, it cannot be ruled out that the FSB managed to cultivate Norwegian politicians, who were then induced to work in the interests of the FSB. The political interests of the Russian consul general, the FSB, and Rosneft—which was hoping at the time for a 20 percent share of the oil field on the Norwegian continental shelf—and the Norwegian Barents Secretariat were aligned: they all claimed to want to “maintain a good relationship between Russia and Norway.” And those good bilateral relations were, according to FSB logic, harmed by the independent reporting of the Barents Observer. “We only know small parts of a bigger picture,” Nilsen states. “It’s clear there was more Russian influence on the owners than what has been published. Part of it was the general wish of wanting to be friends with the Russians.”
In the end, the plan to fire Nilsen and by doing so scare the rest of the newsroom into producing journalism that served the “Russian and Norwegian relationship” failed miserably, as the entire staff resigned. “It’s simple,” says Nilsen. “Not one Norwegian journalist would work under those circumstances. No way. After Atle and Trude quit, the Barents Observer was dead.”
Giving up a job with a steady paycheck to start your own company is risky. “We have a long perspective on our work, and we knew it wouldn’t be easy to relaunch the paper. But not launching a free news site was never an option,” Staalesen shares.
With not much more than their laptops, the former staff of the Barents Observer rented a new office in the center of Kirkenes. Within forty-eight hours, the Independent Barents Observer was up and running. A crowdfunding campaign was launched, which received funds from readers, and later, foundations. Staalsen and Nilsen insisted that the retooled paper operate in accordance with the Rights and Duties of the Editor and accept “no external interference.”36
The secretariat threatened to file a lawsuit over the name, which they claimed belonged to them. In fact, the name Barents Observer had been created by Atle Staalesen. Norway’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs intervened, informing the secretariat that they could not use the ministry’s funding to sue an independent newspaper.
The legal threat inspired even more support for the new site. Geir Flikke, a leading Norwegian academic and an expert on post-Soviet countries and Arctic relations, started a petition urging the Norwegian Barents Secretariat to stop pressuring the editors, and to let the paper practice free journalism without interference.37 Forty-five university researchers from Norway, Sweden, and Finland quickly signed the petition.
Meanwhile, Nilsen, Pettersen, and Staalesen continued publishing stories on their usual topics. They followed the developments at Rosneft and other Russian oil and energy companies, as well as the joint projects of Statoil and Rosneft in the Arctic and in Norway. In the spring of 2016, they reported an increase in military activity near demilitarized Svalbard: Russian airborne forces were planning to land military instructors and dog teams at Longyearbyen Airport in Svalbard, a possible violation of the Svalbard Treaty.38 Again, their story broke internationally.
In October 2016, the Independent Barents Observer relaunched its Russian-language site after a one-year hiatus.
A month later, Russia issued a secret stop list.
Thomas Nilsen’s name was on it.
The Kremlin has held a grudge against Norway ever since the country joined the European Union’s sanctions against Russia. Among other things, the sanctions have hampered Rosneft’s drilling plans in Norway. In the opinion of Russian diplomats, Norway does not practice its own foreign policy, but instead just follows the lead of the EU.
On November 28, 2016, a representative from Norway’s embassy in Moscow was called into the Russian Foreign Ministry, where he was given a list of people who were forbidden to enter Russia. Norway’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs then informed its Russian counterpart that they were not going to contact individuals to tell them that they were on the list, as serving as the courier for the Russian Federation’s stop lists wasn’t part of the Norwegian foreign ministry’s responsibilities.
The appearance of Thomas Nilsen’s name on the list was likely Russia’s retaliation against the sanctions imposed by the European Union against the “journalist” Dmitry Kiselyov. (The Kremlin believes it is entitled to “sanction” Western journalists because Kiselyov himself was sanctioned.) Since 2013, Kiselyov has led the Russian government’s international media agency, Rossiya Segodnya (Russia Today).39 Rossiya Segodnya’s content consists mostly of Russian propaganda masquerading as news. Occasionally, it supplements its content with topical news in an attempt to enhance its image of credibility. According to Jukka Mallinen, the Finnish expert on Russian media, the site is most likely funded or supported by the Kremlin. The writers and editors are very professional, the articles well-done, and the demagogy relatively intelligent, which isn’t the case with many pro-Kremlin web operations.
The first targets on the list were two Norwegian members of parliament who were denied visas to Russia. Following this incident, the Russian embassy in Oslo sent an email to several Norwegian media outlets, including the Independent Barents Observer, accusing them of disseminating “anti-Russian rhetoric.” Right before the email was sent, much of the Norwegian media had reported on escalating Russian intelligence operations in Norway.40
Nilsen found out about his ban in March 2017, when the FSB in Borisoglebsk told him he was a threat to national security, and declared him persona non grata in Russia. Two days after he was turned away from the border, the Russian embassy in Oslo published a press release hinting, among other things, that Nilsen would be allowed entry to Russia if Norway dropped the sanctions.41 The statement didn’t detail reasons as to why precisely Nilsen was on the list and a commodity in sanctions blackmail.
As soon as news broke of Nilsen’s travel ban, the Norwegian Union of Journalists protested the decision to the Russian embassy, while the European Federation of Journalists alerted the European Council’s media freedom unit.
Nilsen decided he would leave no stone unturned in his quest to find out why he had been put on the list: “It’s my legal right to know. It’s difficult, but there is the possibility and having a court in Russia remove my name from the list, due to freedom of speech.” Team 29, a well-known group of human rights lawyers in Russia, offered to represent him in court and provide legal assistance in investigating the case.
Nilsen began by sending letters to the Border Service of the FSB, the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the FSB border guard unit in Murmansk, requesting information concerning the decision to declare him a threat to national security. Under Russian law, officials are required to answer requests in writing within seven days when addressed with letters priming a court case.
All the agencies responded—shifting the responsibility elsewhere. The FSB in Murmansk said that the case didn’t fall under its jurisdiction. The Foreign Ministry as well as the Border Service of the FSB said they hadn’t made the decision.
Nilsen and his lawyers then initiated their first court case, against the FSB border guards, due to the fact that the border unit had implemented the travel ban. The case was filed in a regional court near the Norwegian border, but the court dismissed it without even looking into the matter. According to the decision, since no case existed to begin with, it didn’t belong to the court.
Eventually, Nilsen and his lawyers managed to get the case heard by the Moscow City Court. “We knew all along that the decision has nothing to do with the border guards,” Nilsen says. “The decision was made in Moscow, in the FSB headquarters in Lubyanka.”
In November 2017, Nilsen received a summons to appear at a court hearing in Moscow the very next morning at nine thirty. On such short notice, Nilsen’s lawyers couldn’t possibly prepare adequately. Nilsen was also unable to travel to Moscow in time. In addition, he was still blacklisted. If he tried to cross the border, he would be considered a criminal offender. His lawyers asked the court to postpone the hearing, which it did.
In December 2017, the Moscow City Court proceeded with the case. This time, Nilsen’s lawyer was present. The hearing was closed to the public and relatively short. The court agreed with the FSB: Nilsen should not be allowed to enter Russia. However, Nilsen’s lawyer wasn’t allowed to read the reasoning behind the court’s decision because it contained “state secrets.” Refusing to provide the full ruling of the court to a lawyer is a violation of Russian law.
Next, Nilsen and his legal team brought the case to the Russian Supreme Court, demanding that the travel ban be rescinded and declared illegal. In May 2018, the Supreme Court sided with the FSB, ruling that the agency didn’t have to disclose why Nilsen wasn’t allowed into Russia.42
Nilsen and his lawyers then complained to the European Court of Human Rights, in Strasbourg. In November 2018, the court informed Nilsen that the case had been accepted for processing. “Now the case is named: Nilsen v. Russia—case number 58505/18,” Nilsen shares.43 He believes it will take several years for the case to get to court, as the queue of Russian citizens with cases pending against the Kremlin is long. “Nevertheless, I am waiting for the case to be processed,” Nilsen says. “The Independent Barents Observer will win and thus continue working for our first priority: free and independent journalism in Norway’s and Russia’s northern border regions.”
Some may consider Nilsen’s move to sue the FSB a “provocation.” “Suing the FSB is not a provocation,” he explains. “It’s an attempt to enable the Independent Barents Observer’s work. I am a reporter and I have rights. Of course, I realize my treatment connects straight to international politics, and I might not stand a chance. But I have the backing of my colleagues, the Norwegian Union of Journalists, and the International Federation of Journalists.”
In early 2019, the architects of the Kremlin’s information warfare set up a new front against the Independent Barents Observer.
The ostensible rationale for the new active measures was an article concerning a gay man from Sweden’s indigenous Sami community. The story had originally been published in Sweden, and was republished in January 2019 on the Observer’s site in English44 and Russian.45
In the article, the Sami man talks about the difficulties he has experienced throughout his life hiding and denying his sexual orientation. But now he wanted to speak openly about his mental health problems—which he had overcome—and how he was able to help Swedish LGBTQ youth with the same issues.
Soon after the publication of the story, the Observer received a letter from Roskomnadzor, the Russian communications supervisory body, which is known for censoring online material that criticizes the policies of the Putin regime. According to the letter, the Observer had published information which was forbidden by law in the Russian Federation.46 Roskomnadzor referred to a part of the story in which the Sami man talked about his previous suicidal thoughts, which they said contained an “invitation to commit suicide, information about a suicide attempt, as well as the possible means to carry out a suicide.” The Observer was given twenty-four hours to remove the Russian-language version of the story, or else the entire site would be blocked in Russia. “For me as the editor it was a completely impossible option to remove the interview, which in my opinion was very good,” Nilsen says.
Because Nilsen didn’t comply, Roskomnadzor blocked Russian access to the Independent Barents Observer.47 (Today, a reader in Russia needs a VPN connection or Tor network to read the site.) Russian Duma member Vitaly Milonov gave an interview in which he echoed the hate speech so often invoked to discriminate against minorities.48 “Block this newspaper to hell. It represents degeneracy, and the people behind its ideology have the psyche of a queer,” he said. Ultimately, the story turned out to be one of the most popular in the history of the Independent Barents Observer—especially the Russian version.
Roskomnadzor’s decision drew widespread criticism around Russia and the Nordic countries. Russian opposition politician Alexey Navalny tweeted that Russian taxpayers paid the salaries of Roskomnadzor officers just so that they could keep an eye on Norwegian sites and order them to remove content. “We have a very rich country,” Navalny wrote sarcastically.49 The Sami man featured in the article disclosed publicly that he was left speechless, and then angry, when he heard about Russia’s actions. “They claim I encourage people to commit suicide, when in fact it’s the contrary. I want to help people,” he shared.
With the support of the Russian antidiscrimination and human rights organization ADC Memorial, Nilsen sued Roskomnadzor. He claimed that the agency’s interpretation of both the story and Russian law was wrong: it didn’t encourage suicide, nor did it give instructions on how to carry one out. “Our main argument was that Roskomnadzor made a wrong judgment vis-à-vis the law,” explains Nilsen. A Moscow court heard the case in July 2019, and kept the ban in place. Nilsen appealed, but it was turned down in 2020.50 Nilsen then appealed to the Russian Supreme Court, where the case is now pending.
Even though Roskomnadzor’s official basis for blocking the Independent Barents Observer was the law that prohibits suicide promotion, one well-informed Russian source told one of Nilsen’s lawyers that “the decision was made at the highest level.” The only levels of government above Roskomnadzor are the FSB, and the Russian leadership.
Today, the Observer is able to evade the Roskomnadzor ban by publishing a newsletter in Russian and posting stories on social media. In addition, they use mirror servers to distribute their content to Russia. They are also developing new technological solutions, such as audio articles on Spotify, to enable wider dissemination of stories in Russia. The site has also expanded into China, and its international readership is on the rise.
Ultimately, Nilsen is interested in finding out why the Kremlin is afraid—to the point of paranoia—of the free flow of information. “There is no ‘foreign aggression’ wanting to harm Russia,” he says. “Journalism and civil society are factors to help developing states do better. Unfortunately, the FSB doesn’t want to develop.”