Cruise missiles over Franz Josef Land

The Russian Navy fired Onyx cruise missiles using Bastion coastal defence units stationed in Franz Josef Land, according to the Northern Fleet. The missiles struck targets more than 200 km away. The firing took place within Zapad-2025, an exercise that is still under way.

Reports say a principal target was a simulated hostile naval group in the Barents Sea. The scenario additionally had the destruction of pretend saboteurs who had entered the archipelago. Russian armed forces posted a video on their social media channels showing several missile systems firing salvos side by side. The firing followed a landing earlier in the same week, when troops, weapons and armoured vehicles were put ashore from the landing ship Aleksandr Otrakovsky.

Franz Josef Land is the northernmost archipelago of Russia, about 400 km from Norway's Svalbard. Russia has expanded its military presence there considerably in recent years. The Nagurskoye base now has a large building complex, an airfield and heavy weapons, among them Bastion, a Monolit-B coastal radar and anti-drone equipment. The Russian war ministry says the Onyx is very hard for modern air defences to detect and can sink vessels of any size from as far as several hundred kilometres. Russia has used these missiles in its war against Ukraine.

Also this week, as part of Zapad-2025, Russia carried out simulated strikes with Kinzhal missiles over the Barents Sea. The Russian armed forces said on Telegram that the Bal coastal missile system was used as well. Large parts of the Barents Sea have been sealed off for the exercise, and several of those areas lie within the Norwegian exclusive economic zone. Northern Sentry, a Norwegian account on X that follows the High North, says one scenario of Zapad-2025 is an attack on Svalbard followed by occupation of the archipelago.

Zapad-2025 is reported to involve at least 13,000 troops. It is the first in the Zapad series to be held after Russia attacked Ukraine at full scale, and it comes while Russia has lost several hundred thousand soldiers in that war. Zapad-2021, the previous exercise of this kind, reportedly involved about 200,000 troops.