"Russian cottage houses" rented for military in Sweden and Norway during NATO exercises
Sweden and Norway have admitted that during recent joint NATO exercises, they rented houses for their troops that belong to Russian politicians linked to the Kremlin.
Source: European Pravda with reference to the publication of the Swedish news agency TT
Details: NATO's Nordic Response exercise, involving 20,000 troops from 13 countries, took place near the tourist area of Troms in northern Norway. Back in 2009, holiday lodges were built there with the main goal of attracting Russian tourists.
Swedish media reported that the owners of these houses are Murmansk Mayor Igor Morar, the daughter of Viktor Saigin, a long-time member of the Murmansk Oblast Duma, and Alexander Timofeev, the head of the Russian nuclear icebreaker fleet Atomflot.
These houses, which are unofficially called "Russian cottage houses" in Norwegian, are located in a militarily sensitive area near the Bardufoss military airport and the Norwegian army headquarters.
The Swedish TV channel TV4 and the Norwegian portal Nordlys confirmed the day before that the Swedish and Norwegian military had indeed rented beds in these "Russian cottage houses" in March. This was also confirmed by Swedish Armed Forces spokeswoman Sofia Kalmeborg in a comment to TT.
Kalmeborg stressed that the agency did not know about the ownership of the cottages and did not have an appropriate procedure for verifying ownership.
She stated that, according to their assessment, there was no risk of information falling into the wrong hands or ears.
Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre, commenting on the information spread in the media, stressed that "we must follow this issue very closely – who owns real estate in Norway, where and whether it could pose a security threat?"
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