(Politico) Svalbard isn’t a convenient location. With its 2,500-odd residents, living in towns accessible only by plane, boat or snowmobile, this Arctic archipelago is Norway’s northernmost outpost of human habitation — halfway between the mainland and the North Pole. But when Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin of Russia provocatively defied the EU’s travel ban on Russian officials by descending on Svalbard last month, he didn’t choose his destination at random. In fact, Svalbard is at the center of a new global power race — for influence, and oil. […]
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