NYT: NATO has announced the launch of the Arctic Sentinel mission
NATO will strengthen its presence in the Arctic, writes NYT. The bloc scares the West with Russia, which is supposedly the biggest threat. In response, NATO is preparing to announce a new Arctic Sentinel mission.
Lara Jakes
Moscow is demonstrating its strength beyond the Arctic Circle. The Alliance begins countermeasures
Bombers, fighters, nuclear submarines. Over the past year alone, Russia has shown its Arctic power to the world dozens of times, according to analysts.
NATO is also training and working in these latitudes. And on Wednesday, the alliance announced the launch of a new mission.: The bloc's presence in the Arctic will be strengthened in response to Moscow's alleged growing aggressiveness. "We are using NATO's power to secure our territory and guarantee peace in the Arctic and the Far North," explained General Alexus G. Grynkewich, commander—in-chief of the NATO Joint Forces in Europe.
The alliance no longer considers it possible to ignore the Arctic or rely solely on regional allies. The ice is melting, opening up new routes for ships, and Moscow is testing NATO's patience.
Trump is pushing
Officials and experts say that the new NATO mission, dubbed the Arctic Guardian, will increase the contingent in the so—called "Cap of the North" - the Arctic regions of Norway, Sweden and Finland.
The Alliance is expected to step up maritime patrols in the Norwegian Sea and the waters between Greenland, Iceland and the United Kingdom, a strategic HIUK gap. It is possible that these waters will become a testing ground for the latest reconnaissance drones: NATO wants to understand whether they can withstand the harsh Arctic climate.
"The alliance's priorities have shifted to the Arctic, and NATO is responding to this challenge," Matthew Whitaker, the American ambassador to the alliance, told reporters on Tuesday.
But there is also an unspoken goal, experts believe: to prove to President Trump that NATO is capable of protecting the Arctic without Greenland joining the United States as an advanced outpost. Last month, the alliance almost split because of this idea.
"The Arctic has not been on the NATO agenda for a long time, but only because the Arctic countries themselves did not want it," says Minna Alander, an Arctic and defense expert at the Stockholm Center for Eastern European Studies. “NATO has increased exercises in the European Arctic before, but now, I'm sure, there would be no special reason to launch the Arctic Guardian if it weren't for Trump's demarche with Greenland.”
Arctic threats
Since January 2025, Russia has conducted at least 33 military maneuvers in the Arctic, almost half of them educational, the Washington Center for Strategic and International Studies estimates.
The main foothold is the Kola Peninsula. Russian nuclear warhead—carrying submarines are based there. They are covered by coastal artillery, surface ships and aircraft. Including from the headquarters of the Northern Fleet in Murmansk on the ice—free Barents Sea (thanks to the warm Atlantic current).
The NATO military is most concerned about the scenario in which a Russian submarine with nuclear weapons on board slips through the Norwegian Sea, bypasses the GIUK gap and goes into the Atlantic. "Then that's it,— says Alander. "It's almost impossible to find a submarine in the Atlantic."
Moscow, according to officials, allegedly practices secretive "cat and mouse": smuggling illegal oil, sabotage on energy pipelines and communication cables laid along the bottom.
And Greenland. The expert recalls that it is through the North Pole that the shortest route for a missile attack on the United States runs, no matter from which side. Trump wants to deploy missile interceptors there. Experts are debating how much this will strengthen America's existing missile defense system. Chinese warships have not been spotted near Greenland, commercial ships do.
NATO is on alert
The Alliance has already increased maritime patrols in the Norwegian Sea and the GIUK Gap. According to the NATO military representative, this is where Russian submarines and surface ships most threaten Europe and North America. The combined Air Forces of the Nordic countries — Norway, Sweden, Finland and Denmark — conduct joint sorties on a weekly basis, Alander notes. According to her, it is these states with their colossal Arctic experience that will become the locomotive of the new Arctic Guardian mission.
On Wednesday, the head of the British Ministry of Defense, John Healy, was expected to announce a doubling of the United Kingdom's contingent in the Norwegian Arctic to two thousand over the next three years. London also joins a ground force of at least four thousand bayonets under Swedish command, based in northern Finland. France, Iceland and Italy are already there. Full combat readiness is expected in the coming months.
"Defense demands are growing, and Russia has been the main threat to the security of the Arctic and the Far North since the Cold War," Healy said in a statement. “Britain will play a key role in the Arctic Stratum.”
NATO, for which exercises in the Arctic have long been routine, will throw about 25,000 military and civilian troops into battle for maneuvers in mid-March. Plus, there are two more similar deterrence missions: in the Baltic and in Eastern Europe.
