At Svalbard, Putin's Arctic spiritual emissary marked nazi-Germany’s invasion of the USSR

Bishop Iyakov, whom the Barents Observer describes as a supporter of Russia's war on Ukraine, visited Pyramiden on Svalbard on 22 June, the anniversary of the German attack on the Soviet Union. He went back to the Russian Orthodox cross he had put up at the Norwegian archipelago two years earlier. He and his travelling companions each set down a symbolic stone of faith before the cross, which is seven metres tall. Trust Arktikugol (Russia's state-owned company on Svalbard) described the visit on VKontakte.

Iyakov led the parish in Naryan-Mar until March this year. That parish oversees Russia's polar regions, among them Novaya Zemlya and Franz Josef Land. He now reports directly to Patriarch Kirill. The newspaper presents him as a religious instrument of the Kremlin in the Arctic. It ties the visit to Putin's portrayal of Kyiv as a centre of neo-Nazism, and to his treatment of the war in Ukraine as a successor to the Soviet struggle in the Great Patriotic War, meaning the second world war.

Operation Barbarossa began on 22 June 1941. Russia made that date a Day of Remembrance and Sorrow in 1996. On arriving in Pyramiden, Iyakov said the date carries deep historical symbolism. He noted that in 1941 it fell on a Sunday, and that in 2025 it is again the second Sunday after Trinity, when Orthodox believers in Russia remember all Russian saints.

No Soviet soldiers were killed on Svalbard in that war. Miners and their families had all been taken back to the Soviet mainland before German naval forces arrived.

Iyakov dedicated the cross to Georgii the Victorious, a saint regarded in Russia as protector of soldiers. It was raised in 2023 without notice to Norwegian authorities on Svalbard. Because it stood outside the regulated areas of Pyramiden, the Norwegians ordered it moved into the town, where it is now.

The bishop arrived on the Professor Molchanov, a Russian research vessel built for ice. This summer it runs passenger tours from Murmansk to Barentsburg for the first time. Passengers sailing directly from Russia need no Norwegian visa, since Svalbard lies outside the Schengen area.