FACTBOX - Russia-Norway Relations

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 09th April, 2019) Russian President Vladimir Putin will hold a meeting with Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg on Tuesday within the framework of the Arctic Forum in Russia's second largest city of St. Petersburg.

Russia was the first European state to recognize Norwegian independence in 1905.

In March 1924, the Soviet Union established diplomatic relations with Norway.

On December 16, 1991, Norway was the first western country to recognize the Russian Federation as a sovereign state.

Russian-Norwegian relations had been actively developing and were characterized by an extensive political dialogue up to the beginning of the Ukrainian crisis.

On April 26-27, 2010, then Russian President Dmitry Medvedev paid a state visit to Norway. On April 26, the president met with King Harald V of Norway and the president of the Norwegian parliament, Dag Terje Andersen.

On April 27, Medvedev held talks with then Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg. A number of bilateral documents were signed as a result of the talks. In addition to Medvedev and Stoltenberg's joint statement as well as statements on the delimitation of maritime boundaries, a number of inter-agency agreements in such fields as education, energy efficiency, the use of renewable energy sources, hydrometeorology and management training were signed.

As part of his visit, Medvedev also took part in the first Russian-Norwegian business forum and awarded medals to 16 Norwegian veterans and one Russian veteran living in Norway on the occasion of the 65th anniversary of the capitulation of Nazi Germany to the Soviet Union.

On September 15, 2010, Stoltenberg paid a working visit to the northwestern Russian city of Murmansk. During the visit, he held talks with Medvedev, after which the bilateral agreement between Russia and Norway on the delimitation of maritime areas and cooperation in the Barents Sea and the Arctic Ocean was signed.

On June 21, 2012, there was a brief conversation between Medvedev and Stoltenberg during the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development in Rio de Janeiro.

On April 5, 2013, Medvedev and Stoltenberg held a conversation on the sidelines of the Conference of the Heads of the Baltic Sea States (Baltic Sea Forum) on environmental protection in St. Petersburg.

On June 4, 2013, Medvedev, as Russian prime minister, participated in the meeting of the Barents Euro-Arctic Council (BEAC) in the northern Norwegian town of Kirkenes. After the meeting, Medvedev held talks with Stoltenberg. The heads of government made a short trip around the waters of the Bokfjorden fjord aboard Helmer Hanssen research vessel and observed rescue exercises at sea.

After negotiations in Kirkenes, Medvedev and Stoltenberg made a symbolic Norwegian-Russian border crossing and visited the Borisoglebsk International Vehicle Customs Checkpoint, the only checkpoint on the land border between the two countries.

Norwegian King Harald, Queen Sonja, Crown Prince Haakon and Prime Minister Erna Solberg attended the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi. On February 14, 2014, Medvedev and Solberg held a conversation.

On February 26, 2014, Crown Prince Haakon paid an official visit to St. Petersburg. He opened new offices of the Consulate General of Norway in St. Petersburg, and took part in the launch ceremony of a plant of Norwegian paint company Jotun in the Tosno District of the Leningrad Region.

After the start of the Ukrainian crisis, the political dialogue between the two countries at the level of senior officials was suspended at the initiative of the Norwegian side.

The cooperation between the foreign ministries of the two states is developing.

On October 24-25, 2014, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov came to Kirkenes on a visit marking the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Northern Norway by the Red Army. Lavrov held talks with his Norwegian counterpart Borge Brende.

They also met on October 14, 2015, on the margins of the BEAC ministerial session in the Finnish city of Oulu; on March 29, 2017, during The Arctic: Territory of Dialogue international forum in Russia's northern city of Arkhangelsk; and on October 18-19, 2017, on the sidelines of the BEAC ministerial session in Arkhangelsk.

On December 6, 2018, Lavrov met with Norway's Foreign Minister Ine Eriksen Soreide on the sidelines of the 25th meeting of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe Ministerial Council in Milan.

Sectoral agencies of the two countries, as well as a number of bilateral cooperation bodies, also continue to maintain the dialogue.

In March 2014, the Norwegian Ministry of Defense suspended military cooperation with Russia because of the situation in Ukraine. On February 2, 2018, after a long hiatus, consultations between the defense departments of the two countries were held in Moscow.

In March 2019, representatives of the Russian and Norwegian defense ministries met in the Norwegian capital of Oslo.

The legal framework of the Russian-Norwegian trade and economic relations is based on the agreement on trade and economic cooperation of March 26, 1996. The document governs the work of the Russian-Norwegian inter-governmental commission on economic, industrial, scientific and technical cooperation. The commission's 18th session was held in Oslo on October 25, 2018.

In 2018, according to the Russian Federal Customs Service, Russian-Norwegian trade amounted to $1.6 billion, including $1.14 billion in Russian exports and $480.3 million in imports.

Russia's exports to Norway include mineral products, food products and agricultural raw materials, metals and products made of them and other goods.

Russia's imports from Norway consist mainly of machinery, equipment and vehicles, metals and products made of them, chemicals, mineral products, food products and agricultural raw materials.

The volume of accumulated direct Norwegian investments in Russia, according to data for the first quarter of 2018, amounted to $238 million, while Russian investments in Norway totaled $486 million.

At the same time, according to experts, the total volume of Norway's accumulated investments in Russia is more than $4 billion. Norway mainly invests in such industries as oil and gas, energy, shipbuilding, telecommunications, food and tourism.

Russia, as a party to the Spitsbergen Treaty of 1920 recognizing Norway's sovereignty over the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard, carries out economic and scientific activities in the archipelago, including coal mining.

The Joint Norwegian-Russian Commission coordinates cooperation between the two countries in the field of fisheries. The commission manages the fish resources in the Barents Sea and the Norwegian Sea. The regular 48th session of the commission was held in Oslo in October 2018.

Bilateral negotiations on maritime and continental shelf delimitation in the Barents Sea have been held between the two countries since 1970. In July 2007, the countries signed an agreement on Maritime Delimitation in the Varangerfjord area. In 2011, the Treaty on Maritime Delimitation and Cooperation in the Barents Sea and the Arctic Ocean, signed in 2010, entered into force.

The Russian-Norwegian energy cooperation is developing. Russian oil company Rosneft and Norwegian energy giant Equinor (formerly Statoil) are implementing joint projects on the Russian shelf of the Sea of Okhotsk, which do not fall under the EU sectoral restrictions.

In May 2013, Rosneft and Statoil signed a cooperation agreement on difficult-to-extract hydrocarbon reserves of the North-Komsomolskoye oilfield in Russia's Arctic. After a successful pilot project, Rosneft and Statoil signed the shareholders and operating agreement to jointly develop the field. The companies agreed to invest in SevKomNeftegaz, an enterprise that will operate at the oilfield. In January 2019, it was reported that Rosneft sold a 33.33 percent stake in SevKomNeftegaz to Equinor.

Russia and Norway are actively cooperating in the field of science and research, both in the bilateral format � through the Norwegian Research Council for Science, the Russian academy of Sciences, the Russian Foundation for Basic Research � and within European structures, including the EU's Horizon 2020 program, Nordic Council of Ministers' programs, the BEAC Joint Working Group on Education and Research.

Bilateral scientific cooperation covers a wide range of research directions in the fields of fisheries, oil and gas production, environmental protection, and the Arctic exploration.

On the basis of direct institution-to-institution agreements, the countries carry out student exchanges and implement joint training programs for specialists in various fields.

Cooperation in the field of culture between the northern regions of Russia and Norway is traditionally the most actively developing one. A number of regions of the Russian northwest and the northern Norwegian communes signed the relevant agreements.