Two shopping centers promptly sprang up to serve Russians looking for Western clothing, gifts, disposable diapers and alcohol. “It was a local, regional and national strategy to focus on turning toward Russia,” Mr. Roine said. More than 266,000 people from Russia crossed the nearby border station into Norway in 2019; last year, that number fell by more than 75 percent. For decades, the vast amounts of cod in the Barents Sea — home to one of the world’s last surviving stocks of the fish — have drawn people and businesses from both countries to this Arctic Circle community. Kirkenes’s most important industrial employer is Kimek, a shipbuilding company that has prospered by repairing commercial fishing boats known as trawlers, especially the Russian ones.

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Persons: Russia ’, ” Mr, Roine Organizations: Arctic Council Locations: Russia, Soviet Union, Norway, Kirkenes