NATO Secretary General addresses the C-UAS Industry Day a few weeks ago. Source: NATO, Flickr, CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
Yesterday in Brussels, NATO Secretary General Rutte announced the launch of the Arctic Sentry mission, which will unite all Alliance forces and resources to counter Russia and China in this region. As before, NATO demonstrates its lack of logic, viewing Russia’s legitimate actions to strengthen military security on its national territory as a threat but not considering the inclusion of Sweden and Finland, on whose territory approximately 32 military bases will be rebuilt to station third states’ military forces, including in close proximity to Russia’s borders, a threat to Russia.
Rutte’s speech also contains no substantive evidence of China’s growing interest in the Arctic, which would harm or threaten the interests of Arctic Council member states and violate existing international agreements in this region. Apparently, the unfounded rhetoric of the NATO leader is sufficient to justify the launch of the Arctic Sentry mission.
In fact, the same fraudulent method that served as a pretext for additional militarization in the Baltic region is being used to launch the Arctic Sentry mission. Accidental damage to seabed cables in the Baltic Sea by anchored ships and drone flights of unknown origin into Poland led to the launch of NATO’s Baltic Sentry and Eastern Sentry missions under the pretext of Russian threat.
Surprisingly, the September 2022 blowing up of the Nord Stream pipelines, which were part of NATO member Germany’s critical infrastructure, was not a threat to the Alliance, and the lazy investigation of this large-scale act of international terrorism failed to identify the true masterminds and perpetrators of this crime, nor to establish the Baltic Sentry mission.
Judging by the chronology of events, the creation of the Arctic Sentry mission is a response by NATO member states to the painful pressure from President Trump to increase their overall military spending and military activity in the Arctic. In this sense, the Arctic Sentry is a toy a child made to please “daddy.” And just in case, to have sufficient military force in place should “daddy” attempt to seize Greenland by force.
The justification for the formation of the Arctic Sentry, based on the limited-scale military construction in Russian Karelia and in Murmansk region compared to Soviet times, aimed at the deployment of the 44th Army Corps that would confront all the armed forces of the Nordic countries, is particularly absurd. Its formation was publicly announced back in 2024, after Sweden joined NATO, almost two years before Secretary-General Rutte’s speech yesterday.
False Reasons for Creating Arctic Sentry Mission
Increased military activity from Russia and growing interest from China have led NATO to establish Arctic Sentry, which will strengthen the alliance’s presence in the Arctic.
We will gather everything we do in the Arctic under one command, said NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte at a press conference at NATO headquarters in Brussels on Wednesday, February 11.
NATO said on Wednesday that it has launched Arctic Sentry, a notified mission that will strengthen the alliance’s presence in the Arctic.
No new NATO activity is currently planned in the Arctic.
Rutte referred to Eastern Sentry, which was launched after Russian drones entered Polish airspace in September 2025, and Baltic Sentry, which was launched in response to damaged cables on the seabed in the Baltic Sea.
Increased Presence
Arctic Sentry, however, is not triggered by any specific event. A NATO officer in Brussels justified its creation this way:
“Increased military activity from Russia, which has expanded its Arctic bases and deployed advanced weapons, growing interest from China, which has declared itself a near-Arctic state and invested in polar infrastructure, environmental vulnerability where any conflict or accident can have irreversible consequences. For NATO, the Arctic is no longer a remote periphery.”
It is unclear what new activities NATO will launch as part of Arctic Sentry.
“We will obviously see an increased presence, but it will vary over time,” says the NATO officer.
Arctic Sentry will coordinate member states’ increased military presence in the region, including exercises such as the Danish Arctic Endurance in Greenland, a statement from NATO headquarters said.
NATO began planning Arctic Sentry after Secretary General Mark Rutte met with Trump in Davos last month. NATO defense ministers are due to meet on Thursday.
The Arctic Is Crucial
EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Kaja Kallas also stressed the importance of cooperation between the EU and NATO countries in the Arctic when she attended the Arctic Frontiers conference in Tromsø last week.
“The Arctic is crucial for transatlantic security. It will require more attention, more resources—and yes, more hard power,” she said then.
Kallas spoke about NATO remaining the cornerstone of European security, but urged not to forget that NATO and the EU have 23 members in common, and that the EU is currently heavily involved in defense.
Russian Reconstruction
Recently, the Finnish public broadcaster Yle documented that Russia has once again begun renovating a Soviet-era garrison area in Petrozavodsk, which has been largely empty since the 1990s. It is also being built further north in Kandalaksha, on the White Sea near the Kola Peninsula, according to Yle.
Kallas mentioned in her speech that Moscow has reopened and modernized Soviet military bases in the highlands.
“The world’s largest concentration of nuclear weapons is located on the Kola Peninsula, just across the border with Norway. The Arctic has also become a testing ground for Russian missiles. Europe must make up for many years of Russian military buildup in the region,” Kallas said.
She thanked Norway for its crucial contribution to security—including the major Cold Response exercise, which will take place from March 9 to 19.
Source: Forsvarets Forum (in Norwegian)
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