U.K. sending military expert to Canada amid Russian threat to Arctic

The U.K. is dispatching Nick Diggle, a former Royal Navy officer and research specialist in Arctic security, to Ottawa in September.

Britain is sending a military expert on the threat posed by Russia and China in the Arctic to work in the British High Commission in Ottawa.

In a sign of deepening co-operation between Canada and Britain on defence matters, the U.K. is dispatching Nick Diggle, a former Royal Navy officer and research specialist in Arctic security, to Ottawa in September.

The former counterterrorism expert’s move follows a warning from Canada’s defence chief that protecting the Arctic region is a key concern for the Armed Forces.

At a conference in Ottawa in March, Gen. Wayne Eyre said Russia had reoccupied abandoned Cold War bases in its Far North.

The threat of a Russian incursion into Canada’s Arctic is very low at the moment, he said, but it is “not inconceivable that our sovereignty may be challenged” in the future from the North.

Eyre also highlighted Russia’s “remilitarization” of the North, which is potentially vulnerable because of its sparse population and lack of infrastructure.

Diggle, a former warfare officer with the Royal Navy, has been researching how the U.K. and Canada can work together “to combat the geostrategic threat from Russia and China in the Arctic” at the Changing Character of War Centre based at Oxford University in England.

The centre, which studies armed conflict, said Diggle will take up the post of minister-counsellor at the High Commission in Ottawa.