Arctic

KALIX, Sweden—A dozen highly trained U.S. Army Green Berets lumbered through a northern Swedish pine forest, struggling not to fall on their brand new skis as they dragged sleds over hills and frozen creeks.

Veterans of the global war on terror, the special forces were retraining for Arctic warfare. And the extreme cold was proving as hostile as any human enemy.

Near the Arctic Circle, temperatures constantly hovered around -30 degrees Fahrenheit (-34 Celsius). Days into the training, one team member—who had spent years in the jungles and deserts of the Middle East and Asia—was dismissed from the course with a boil on his finger the size of a cherry after spending the night outside in the cold. A European soldier from another team was hospitalized and risked losing parts of two toes. Instructors suspected he had failed to change out of his sweaty socks.

ABOARD THE MV NUNALIK—Greenland lurked in the distance as Capt. Donald Gibson rushed to the bridge of his cargo ship amid a sudden Arctic storm. Snow lashed against the pilothouse windows while he and his crew struggled to control the vessel and steer clear of icebergs.

Down in the ship’s hold was construction material needed to upgrade the northernmost military outpost, a Canadian spy station providing crucial intelligence on Russia’s military.

After nine days traversing 2,500 nautical miles, pitching on swells from Hurricane Erin, the Canadian-flagged Nunalik had reached its destination—30 minutes late. It was Friday, and dockworkers in the port of the U.S.’s Pituffik Space Base had already gone home for the August weekend. The delivery would have to wait.

Elite combat troops shred their physiques to look like Hollywood hunks. In the Arctic, that can kill you.

The cold eats away at soldiers, who lose on average 3,000 calories a day while on exercises in the Arctic Circle—even while eating full rations and before they have taken part in any strenuous activity.

“The modern soldier goes to the gym, likes to look lean with washboard abs, so they don’t have any fat on their muscles,” said Swedish Army Sgt. Maj. Fredrik Flink, who leads winter-warfare courses for U.S. Marines and other forces in northern Sweden.

“After three days here, they are really worn down. That is the biggest problem we have,” he said. “Basic things aren’t sexy nowadays.”

Tensions are growing at the top of the world.

US President Donald Trump wants Greenland, Russia is modernising its Arctic military bases, Chinese icebreakers are opening new routes and spies are being unmasked.

But as the battle for one of the world’s coldest places heats up, an increasingly fragile security balance may be breaking down, leading to an escalating arms race.

Canada is barely an afterthought in this discussion.

Russia’s 200-metre long floating dock was meant to help Moscow control the Arctic seas.

In service, the vast craft will assist in repairing nuclear-powered ice-breakers, needed to cleave safe passage through the frozen waters around Nato’s northern flank.

But the journey of the craft to its home in the Russian port of Murmansk has been interrupted by British sanctions, the Foreign Office announced on Tuesday.

Russia completes today its largest military exercises since the fall of the Soviet Union. With naval vessels operating in the Atlantic, Arctic, Pacific, Baltic, Caspian, and Mediterranean, President Putin seeks through his Ocean-24 exercise to divert attention from his stalled war in Ukraine and to remind Communist China and the world that Russia is still a maritime power.

Russia’s defense ministry said that 400 vessels, 120 aircraft and helicopters, and 90,000 personnel, are taking part in the exercise. Even with four Chinese warships and a supply vessel joining maneuvers in the northern Pacific, the Russian numbers seem to be a stretch.