Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov hits back on Sweden’s Carl Bildt that last week wrote an up-ed in the New York Times urging Russia to withdraw its tactical nuclear warheads from the Kola Peninsula.

When visiting Moscow last week the Norwegian Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Støre raised concern about Russia’s denial of entry visa for employees of the Norwegian Helsinki Committee and Amnesty International.

The Norwegian Minister of Environment Erik Solheim wanted to hire a plane from next week’s meeting in Tromsø between the environmental ministers of the Barents Region. Now, he drops the meeting.

Statoil will sell all its petrol stations in Europe, including 19 in Northwest-Russia. Statoil opened its first petrol station in Murmansk in 1993.

The Shtokman Development AG's board of directors today decided to postpone the development of the huge field in the Barents Sea with three years.

The Norwegian border town of Kirkenes is celebrating the Barents Spektakel 2010 festival this week. The festival slogan this year is “Arctic Calling” and the program consists of conserts, theatre, art exhibitions and debates on numerous topics. See a slide-show of photos on this web page.

East-West cooperation in the Barents Region is unique and can be seen as a good example for other border regions in Europe, the Barents Review – a new publication from the Norwegian Barents Secretariat – concludes.

The North of Russia under the threat of depopulation. Since the year 2000 the population in the Russian part of the Barents region decreased by 462.000, or by almost 11 percent.

Shtokman partners Gazprom, Statoil and Total might decide to only feed the gas from the field into pipelines to the European marked and drop the plans to produce liquefied natural gas (LNG).

-We hope for regional participation when Russian President Dmitiri Medvedev goes to Norway later this spring, says Murmansk regional Duma Yevgeny Nikora.