When Neil Armstrong landed on the moon, his first act was to erect an American flag. Erecting flags is what countries do to mark territory they consider theirs. Now Russians are raising the Soviet flag in a similar way on Svalbard, the Norwegian archipelago that used to have a sizeable Russian population. That’s a cause for concern – demonstratively making claims on other countries’ territory is a Russian speciality.

There are now three Soviet flags. One placed in Svalbard’s second-largest town, Barentsburg, and two in the smaller town of Pyramiden. The stunts were bound to attract attention in the tiny archipelago, which is home to just 2,600 or so residents. Indeed, the stunts were designed to get attention, especially in Pyramiden, which was once a Soviet mining village. Not just just any Soviet mining village. As Visit Svalbard, Svalbard’s tourism agency, explains on its website: ‘The town was developed according to Soviet ideas of an ideal society. There was a petrol station, greenhouse and farm, school, kindergarten, hotel, restaurant, pretty much “all the facilities” one could need.’ But in 1998 the Russians packed up and left. Coal mining on Svalbard, as well as providing the local Russian population with a replica Russian life in a Norwegian archipelago, had become unworkable for the state-owned mining company Trust Arktikugol. The Russians departed in such a hurry that they left their cups behind on their dining tables and newspaper cuttings on the walls. The collapse of Russian life in Pyramided was a microcosm of the Soviet Union’s collapse.

And now two Russian flags suddenly fly in Pyramiden, which remains a ghost town (and from which state-linked Russian tourist groups have been banned since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine). One of them was placed at the summit of Pyramiden, the mountain after which the town is named, by none other Trust Arktikugol’s general director, the Barents Observer reports. It took the company boss, who was accompanied by employees and Russian tourists, four hours to climb the mountain and place the flag there. ‘The tradition has been revived and will live!’, he wrote on Vkontakte, the Russian social-media network. ‘The blog post adds two photos of an old painting from way back showing the same Soviet flag on the top,’ the Barents Observer relays. Now the hammer and sickle can be seen by anyone approaching the archipelago. Recent interventions on Svalbard don’t stop there. Russians keen to restore Soviet-style glory to Svalbard have also refreshed the Soviet-era ‘Peace to the World’ slogan in in Pyramiden and Barentsburg.

Because Svalbard is a remote outpost in the High North, though indisputably Norwegian territory, the Russian flag stunts haven’t received much attention. They should, because they’re a deliberate affront to Norway. When the boss of a state-owned company spends four hours climbing to the top of a mountain peak, accompanied by company staff and assorted other Russians, and places a Soviet flag there, it’s a signal that Russia wants to return to the glory days of the Soviet Union at the expense of other countries. The Soviet Union, of course, had a habit of marking its domain in other countries by placing not just flags there but obedient local officials, too. Marking territory without taking it is, in fact, the most convenient way of expanding one’s influence. There was no doubt that the Soviets were ultimately in charge in the Warsaw Pact’s countries, but they didn’t have the massive expense that would have been their lot if they’d occupied these countries.

Which towns and mountain peaks will next find themselves defaced by Soviet flags? We can’t know. We do know, though, that it’s almost impossible to avenge such provocations, let alone prevent them. NATO member Norway has turned the other cheek after the Soviet restoration stunts on Svalbard, and the next NATO member state subjected to such affronts will also struggle to articulate a response. Liberal democracies don’t retaliate to non-military provocations eye for an eye. Placing, say, Norwegian flags on Russian landmarks would clearly be ridiculous.

‘They’re just a bunch of colonialists,’ a friend said to me the other day, referring to Russia. She’s not just any observer: in the 1980s, she was an East German student in the Soviet Union. When she returned to what had then become Germany, she became a teacher of Russian, and has diligently and lovingly taught the language ever since, taking countless school groups to the country and welcoming Russian school classes to her German town. Like others with intimate knowledge of the country, she has tried to focus on the good sides of Russian society and culture, but when Russia invaded Ukraine, she decided she was done with the country.

They’re just a bunch of colonialists: this may be the curse of Russia. At times over the generations, the world’s largest country has seemed willing to work with other nations and to exist within what we call the rules-based international order. But often Russians’ instincts seem to involve dominating other countries. That’s why the Soviet flags on Svalbard are so alarming.