MOSCOW (Sputnik) — Russia will finish building autonomous military bases in the Franz Josef Land and New Siberian Islands in the Arctic by the end of this year, Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said Wednesday.
"This year, we will finish constructing unique military towns of the closed-cycle type in the archipelagos of Franz Josef Land and New Siberian Islands," Shoigu said at a ministerial meeting.
The defense minister said the military was building networks of airfields and monitoring stations in the Arctic outposts to improve the nation’s air defenses.
Russia's northernmost archipelagos stretch over thousands of miles off its northwestern coast in the Barents and Kara seas, as well as in its Far Eastern maritime territories between the Laptev and the East Siberian seas.
