The Russian military is investing in a programme of modernisation across the region, building new bases and upgrading existing ones. The video shows the Northern Clover facility in Yakutia, which became operational four years ago and which is manned by 250 troops. The base supports military operations on Kotelny Island, located in the Laptev Sea off Russia’s northern coast, and is also home to the Temp military airfield as well as a radar station which can detect approaching aircraft from long distances away.
Both Northern Clover and Arctic Trefoil, the country’s most northerly base located just over 1,000 miles west on the Franz Josef Land archipelago, are equipped with closed life-support system technology, allowing them to operate autonomously without troops having to brave the challenging Arctic conditions.
Northern Clover can operate without being resupplied for an entire year.
Last week, Russia staged a series of live-fire artillery drills at combat training ranges in the Barents Sea, further stoking up already heightened tensions with the West.
The large amphibious assault ship Alexander Otrakovsky, which is based with the Kola Flotilla of the Russian Northern Fleet’s all-arms forces, carried out the military exercises at combat training ranges in the remote Arctic waters, the fleet’s press office confirmed.
A Russian soldier at the Northern Clover base in the Arctic Circle (Image: GETTY)
It said: "The combat teams of the amphibious assault ship sharpened their skills while conducting a sea battle with a notional warship and suppressing a fire pocket on the coast.”
The artillery crews also destroyed a “notional floating mine”, the statement added.
A threat assessment written by Pavel K Baev of Oslo’s Peace Research Institute and published in the
