A humpback whale named Stanislav was successfully freed from a fishing net in a first-of-its-kind rescue operation in Russia's Barents Sea.

Reports are coming in about hundreds of dead birds from Hammerfest in the west to Murmansk in the east. A zone with a radius of five kilometers is closed and guards are in place round-the-clock.

Meanwhile, the spreading of the virus appears to have moved to other towns in the region. Among the new local hotspots for the virus is the city of Monchegorsk where 26 new cases were registered on the 16th June.

Last weekend, the only railway bridge connecting the Kola Arctic with the mainland collapsed. The waters of the Kola River moved the support, then two spans collapsed.

A big cruise vessel has anchored up along the banks of the Kola Bay as the number of infected workers in Novatek's Belokamenka project continues to grow. The construction site operated by natural gas company Novatek continues to be the hotbed of COVID-19 cases in the Russian north.

The official