Heidi Olufsen is Norway’s new Ambassador to Moscow

34 years since she first came to Moscow as a student, Heidi Olufsen will this fall be back as Norwegian Ambassador to Russia.

“I can’t imagine a more important assignment than returning there now,” writes Heidi Olufsen on Linked after it became known that she is appointed as Norway’s top diplomat in Russia.

“It’s been 34 years since I first came to Moscow as a student, witnessing the dissolution of the Soviet Union,” she tells.

Heidi Olufsen now returns to a country at war, a country that has listed neighboring Norway among Moscow’s “most unfriendly” states. Diplomatic relations has never been more challenging than today.

Olufsen is currently Consul General in New York.

In the period 2013 to 2017, she served as Consul General in St. Petersburg. Norway is today the only Nordic country that still has a Consulate General in St. Petersburg. In Murmansk, however, Oslo decided to close its Consulate General in 2022 after unmasked harassment of both diplomats and local employees following Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine.

Earlier this year, Russia’s Foreign Ministry withdrawed accreditation from Norway’s honorary consul in Arkhangelsk, Andrei Shalyov.

Heidi Olufsen takes over the position as Ambassador after Robert Kvile who has served in Moscow since 2022.

Located in Kirkenes, Norway, just a few kilometres from the borders to Russia and Finland, the Barents Observer is dedicated to cross-border journalism in Scandinavia, Russia and the wider Arctic.

As a non-profit stock company that is fully owned by its reporters, its editorial decisions are free of regional, national or private-sector influence. It has been a partner to ABJ and its predecessors since 2016.