The Soviet flag flew high as this year's first passenger voyage from Murmansk came to Svalbard 

The Professor Molchanov docked in Barentsburg on 12 March after a voyage across the Barents Sea from Murmansk. On board were miners, their families, and Arctic scientists, according to Arktikugol’s post on VKontakte.

By sailing directly from Murmansk, Russian citizens no longer need to fly via Oslo or Tromsø, avoiding the requirement for a Norwegian visa. Ten voyages with the Professor Molchanov are scheduled for 2026.

The ship was welcomed to the Norwegian archipelago with a giant Soviet flag hoisted atop a coal-loading crane in the port. Arktikugol did not explain why Moscow’s state-owned mining company at Svalbard chose the Soviet flag over the Russian tricolour.

Kari Aga Myklebost, professor of Russian history at UiT – The Arctic University of Norway, sees the flag’s use as part of a broader effort to assert Russia’s presence on Svalbard through symbols and actions.

“Russia is investing in its Svalbard presence in cost-efficient – if not outright cheap – ways, while also testing the limits to see how Norway will respond,” Myklebost told the Barents Observer.

The Soviet flag symbolises pride and confidence in a narrative of a heroic past, from a time when Moscow’s presence on Svalbard numbered in the thousands. Today, Barentsburg has around 300 inhabitants, and the ghost town of Pyramiden only a handful.

Vladimir Putin famously characterized the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union as the "greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century."

Large Soviet flags first reappeared on Svalbard in 2024. That year, a giant version of the USSR state emblem – the hammer and sickle – was also placed as a decoration on a mountain above Pyramiden.

That, however, was not the first time Arktikugol used flags to stir controversies at Svalbard. In 2023, the state-owned company included a flag of the so-called Donetsk People’s Republic when staging its May 9th parade-like event in in Pyramiden.