- Category
- Latest news
Foreign Tourists Detained After Flying Drones Near Norway’s Ramsund Naval Base
- Authors
![Photo of Roman Kohanets]( "Photo of Roman Kohanets")
-111f0e5095e02c02446ffed57bfb0ab1.jpeg "Photo of Roman Kohanets")
A foreign tourist group was detained in northern Norway after flying drones near Ramsund, one of the country’s main naval bases, according to NRK on March 21.
Police were alerted on Saturday after several drones were spotted inside a restricted zone near the naval facility.
The case centers on suspected violations of Norway’s drone restrictions around sensitive military infrastructure, an issue that has drawn heightened scrutiny as security concerns rise across the country’s north.
We bring you stories from the ground. Your support keeps our team in the field.
The reported breach comes as Norway faces growing pressure to protect military sites and other critical infrastructure in the Arctic. Norwegian security services warned in February that they expect Russia to step up spying in 2026, including surveillance of military targets and the mapping of infrastructure by civilian vessels.
Norwegian authorities have not publicly detailed the full background of the tourists, but the incident fits a broader pattern that officials have described as increasingly serious.
“We expect Russian intelligence services to increase their activity in Norway in 2026, with a continued focus on military targets and allied exercises, Norway’s support for Ukraine, and operations in the High North and the Arctic region,” the Norwegian security services stated in their annual threat assessment.
Before this year, Norwegian military officials also warned that operatives posing as tourists and fishermen had been used for information-gathering near the Russian border.
The case also aligns with broader allied efforts to guard sensitive infrastructure against covert probing and sabotage.
Recently, NATO has intensified patrols in the Baltic Sea under Operation Baltic Sentry, treating the protection of undersea cables and pipelines as an active mission rather than a routine exercise.
The effort follows a string of suspicious incidents in which commercial vessels appeared to drag anchors across the seabed, raising fears of covert sabotage against critical European infrastructure.
Officials stopped short of directly accusing Moscow, but German naval officers reported increased activity by Russia’s shadow fleet, often moving through the Baltic with Russian naval units nearby.
