Whenever the president of the United States is away from the White House, he will never be far from a deadly briefcase nicknamed the ‘nuclear football’.

Aluminum-framed and weighing 20kg, the leather satchel provides the president with all the procedures and communication technology he requires to unleash a nuclear Armageddon.

Together with the ominous briefcase – guarded at all times by a military aide – the commander in chief also has constant access to the ‘nuclear biscuit’: a credit-card-sized piece of plastic containing the codes he needs to launch nuclear weapons.

It’s vital the president is always only a few seconds away from the football and the biscuit, because the time between Russia launching an attack and a doomsday scenario is alarmingly brief.

For example, if a projectile was launched from the Kola Peninsula – notorious for housing the most highly concentrated nuclear weapons stockpile in the world –  it would take less than 20 minutes to cross the Arctic, fly over Greenland, and reach America. 

‘An intercontinental ballistic missile comes down with a speed of 7km per second, it takes 18 minutes from launch until it reaches a major US city,’ Norway’s Minister of Defence, Tore Sandvik, recently told the Financial Times.

If an 800-kiloton nuclear warhead detonated above midtown Manhattan, its centre would reach a temperature of approximately 100 million °C, or about four to five times the temperature inside the sun’s core. 

An initial fireball would quickly transform into a hurricane of flames, burning up vehicles and tearing apart the Empire State Building, Grand Central Station and the Chrysler Building, while radioactive fallout would begin settling tens of miles away.

The same is true for Washington DC, where an 800-kiloton warhead aimed at Capitol Hill would kill or severely injure 1.3 million people, as locations synonymous with US history like the White House, the Washington Monument and the Smithsonian National Museum are swiftly demolished. 

In less than a heartbeat after a similarly-sized detonation above Chicago’s Loop, everyone within half a square mile would be vaporised instantly, and all buildings would vanish.

A shockwave, travelling faster than the speed of sound, would expand outwards, bulldozing everything within roughly one mile of ground zero, including the Riverwalk, Cloud Gate, Union Station, most of Chicago’s financial district, and the Jardine Water Purification Plant.

Then there’s the devastating nuclear fallout – the result of a toxic mushroom cloud composed of dust, soil, concrete, ash, debris, and radioactive materials, all vaporised into particles due to intense heat.

As the wind transports these particles, they will contaminate people, animals, water, and soil, subjecting potentially millions to severe radiation sickness, if they aren’t killed instantly by the lethal plume. 

The Sarmat intercontinental ballistic missile is launched from Plesetsk in northwestern Russia in April, 2022

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Located on Russia’s extreme northwestern flank in the Arctic Circle, just across the border from northern Norway, the Kola serves as the base of Vladimir Putin’s prized Northern Fleet as well as the testing ground for new, powerful weapons.

Donald Trump may have backtracked from his demand to purchase Greenland, but the battle for ascendancy in the Arctic is far from over, as Nato races to catch up with years of Russian military build-up in the region.

Nearly all of the Arctic states – Russia included – reduced their military presence at the end of the Cold War by shutting down bases, with the US closing down several in Iceland and Greenland.

But when Putin rose to power in the 2000s, Moscow got a head start on military and economic revitalisation in the region, speeding ahead of Western powers.

Today, the Kremlin operates more than 40 military facilities along the Arctic coast, including military bases, airfields, radar stations and ports.

Russia also controls around 50 per cent of the Arctic’s landmass and waters, granting it by far the largest footprint of the eight countries with a presence in the region, which includes the US and Canada as well as the five Nordics.

The Arctic is home to the Northern Fleet, Moscow’s Arctic naval force founded in 1733 to safeguard the Russian Empire’s fisheries and shipping routes.

The base currently holds at least 16 nuclear-powered submarines and a hypersonic missile called the Tsirkon, which can travel at eight times the speed of sound.

‘Russia’s Northern Fleet is one of its most capable fleets, and one that they invest in frequently,’ Philip Ingram, a former colonel in British military intelligence, tells the Daily Mail. ‘It is something that has been carefully monitored ever since Nato was created.’

Putin also maintains a high degree of preparedness at the testing site on Novaya Zemlya, an Arctic archipelago where Russia last October completed the successful test of a new nuclear-powered cruise missile called the Burevestnik, meaning ’Storm Petrel’.

The Russian leader called the missile, which allegedly travelled 9000 miles in a test that lasted 15 hours, ‘a unique weapon that no other country possesses’.

‘The balance of power in the nuclear power game is fundamental,’ Hamish de Bretton-Gordon, a former British Army colonel, tells the Daily Mail.

‘The reason that we have had no war between the East and West since the Second World War is because there’s been a nuclear parity. As soon as that balance is affected, then we’re in a really dangerous situation.’

Russia’s increased military activity in the Arctic ‘is why something must be done’, he says.

Moscow ‘has got something like 12 nuclear icebreakers, that can basically go through any ice, whereas the West has maybe two or three’, he added, ‘so when it comes to freedom of maneuver, Russia really has the advantage in the polar regions.’

The Kremlin is making use of those icebreakers to develop the Northern Sea Route – an increasingly valuable shipping route for Moscow and Beijing – which runs along Russia’s northern coastline and offers a shortcut for the transfer of goods between Europe and Asia.

The result – halving the distance ships would need to travel between the continents – would be immensely lucrative for Russia, providing an integral economic lifeline to its sanctions-hit economy.

When Vladimir Putin rose to power in the 2000s, Moscow began remilitarising the Arctic region

The Krasnoyarsk nuclear submarine during a flag-rising ceremony led by Russia’s president at the Arctic port of Severodvinsk on December 11, 2023

Last week, after abandoning his plans to acquire Greenland, Trump announced on Truth Social that he had achieved ‘the framework of a future deal’ with respect to the semi-autonomous territory, as well as ‘the entire Arctic Region’.

He seemed to turn his focus to polar security, much to the satisfaction of the Nordic countries which have been raising the alarm about the topic for decades.

‘Nato must increase its engagement in the Arctic,’ said Denmark’s Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen, following the World Economic Forum at Davos.

‘Defence and security in the Arctic is a matter for the entire alliance,’ she added.

The Nordic neighbours of Russia have been warning about the situation for a while, trying to vie for Nato’s attention but with little success, in part because of opposition from the likes of the US.

‘We know that the Russians are having more activity in the north. The security situation is also that when the polar ice is melting, China is rising as a regional hegemon but with global interests. They have self-proclaimed themselves as a near-Arctic nation,’ Sandvik told the FT.

But now, Arctic security is finally near the top of the Western alliance’s agenda.

‘We’re working together to ensure that the whole of Nato is safe and secure and will build on our cooperation to enhance deterrence and defence in the Arctic,’ Nato General Secretary Mark Rutte wrote.

According to Sandvik, Putin has designs on trying to gain control of the full Arctic region so he can block Nato allies’ access to two key shipping routes that would help resupply Western forces in conflict.

The first is the better-known GIUK Gap, a pair of naval choke points between Greenland, Iceland and the UK.

The second is the Bear Gap, the stretch of water between the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard and its mainland, ending close to the Kola Peninsula, which Russian ships must traverse to reach the Atlantic.

Norway currently deploys P8 reconnaissance planes as well as satellites, long-range drones, submarines and frigates to monitor Russian activity in the Bear Gap and elsewhere.

‘Putin needs to establish what is called the Bastion defence. He needs to control the Bear Gap to make sure that he can use his submarines and the Northern Fleet. And he wants to deny [Nato] allies access to the GIUK Gap,’ Sandvik told the Telegraph.

‘He wants to deny allies supplies, help, and support in the transatlantic, he needs to control the area. And all his doctrines and military plans are about that,’ he added. ‘So for us, the most important thing for Norway is to have control over those gaps.’

A video screen grab shows the Borei-class nuclear-powered submarine K-535 Yuri Dolgoruky after launching an RSM-56 Bulava ballistic missile in the Barents Sea, 2019

Several Nato allies, including the US, the UK and France, have intensified training exercises in Arctic conditions in countries like Norway, Finland and Greenland.

In March, around 25,000 soldiers from across the alliance – including 4,000 from the US – will take part in the Cold Response exercise in northern Norway, the largest military exercises in the country in 2026, ‘which will demonstrate the unity of Nato and the ability of the alliance to deter threats in the high north’, the Royal Navy said.

Copenhagen recently announced it would spend 14.6 billion kroner (about £1.6 billion) to support security in the strategic Arctic region, near the US and Russia.

Despite climbing down on demands to seize the territory, Trump has said that a ‘piece’ of his planned ‘Golden Dome’ missile defence system would be placed on Greenland.

Golden Dome envisions expanding existing ground‑based defences such as interceptor missiles, sensors and command‑and‑control systems while adding more experimental space‑based elements meant to detect, track and potentially counter incoming threats from orbit.

These would include advanced satellite networks and still‑debated on‑orbit weaponry.

The US already runs the main military facility on Greenland, the Pituffik Space Base, located in the far north-west on the shores of Baffin Bay, over 900 miles north of Greenland’s capital, Nuuk.

About 200 American troops are stationed at the facility keeping watch for incoming ballistic missiles as part of the US Early Warning System.

Being located above the Arctic Circle, and roughly halfway between Washington and Moscow, enables the base to peer with its radar over the Arctic region, into Russia and at potential flight paths of US-targeted Chinese missiles.

The executive order establishing Golden Dome, signed on January 27, 2025, set an aggressive timetable to field a comprehensive homeland missile-defence system by 2028.

A year later, however, the programme has yet to spend much of the $25 billion appropriated last summer, as officials continue to debate fundamental elements of its space‑based architecture.

A Bulava missile launched by the Russian Navy Northern Fleet’s Project 955 Borei nuclear missile cruiser submarine, Yuri Dolgoruky, in 2018

Closeup satellite imagery of the Zapadnaya Litsa Naval Base, located within the Litsa Fjord at the westernmost point of the Kola Peninsula

Tightening up Arctic security is crucial, Ingram argues, because ‘the world is becoming hugely more unstable’.

Dr Troy Bouffard, an assistant professor of Arctic security at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, is in agreement, and believes the Western alliance is the key to future prosperity.

‘Nato is more important than ever. We’re seeing a destabilised world. The world order as we knew it from post-World War II, it’s gone. It’s effectively dead,’ he says.

‘And China right now has the strongest lead in terms of reshaping a new world order. That means we’re starting to get into an era of rules-based order not meaning anything.’

He continued: ‘We’re going to need a very strong security apparatus to keep things calm in the maritime world, [and to ensure] continental security. [We need] some way to signal that we’re not going to put up with too much anarchy … and Nato’s going to be one of the strongest organisations in the world to do [that].’

And as the world enters the ‘hypersonic era’ – defined by the threat of missiles that can travel five times the speed of sound – the strategic importance of Greenland will only increase, he argues.

‘There’s no threat vector that isn’t viable right now, or practical. Hypersonics can be launched from the air, land, or sea, and that makes every inch of the Arctic a potential vector in and of itself. So, Greenland’s role is going to amplify significantly.’

As part of the West’s adaptation to the hypersonic era, ‘we have to redo our entire North American defence system,’ he says.

‘Ballistic missiles defined the threat of our lives for decades, hypersonics will be that for many, many decades. This is our new threat for life.’

The Pituffik Space Base (formerly Thule Air Base) is pictured in northern Greenland, on October 4, 2023

The crew of the K-51 Verkhoturie nuclear submarine, located at the Gadzhiyevo base on the eastern shores of Guba Sayda

According to reports, Russia is developing at least three hypersonic weapons that are operational or approaching operational status.

One is the Oreshnik intermediate-range ballistic missile, launched against Lviv on January 8 as part of an intensive overnight attack on western, central and southeastern Ukraine, comprising 278 Russian missiles and drones.

With an immense speed of Mach 10-11 and a reported range of up to 5,500 kilometres, the nuclear-capable, hypersonic missile theoretically puts much of Europe within reach.

The weapon is understood to have a warhead that deliberately fragments during its final descent into multiple, independently targeted inert projectiles, causing distinctive repeated explosions just seconds apart.

The threat posed by hypersonic missiles is ‘tangible’, says Dr Bouffard. ‘We are at the early stages of this being a fully operationalised set of hypersonic systems.’

He continues: ‘This will be the defining threat of our lives for decades, and as a result, we have to figure out for North America our new missile defence system. Europe’s going to have to figure out its own issues.

‘We are all going to have to live with this and redo our systems. Because hypersonics, as a technology, have rendered all of our previous missile defence technology almost completely useless.’