Russians again! Tourist storms bank on remote Norwegian island without any escape plan

A small Norwegian town on a remote archipelago near the North Pole, where polar bears outnumber human residents, has been shaken by the first-ever bank robbery in its living memory.

On Friday morning, a 29-year-old Russian tourist visited a bank in the town of Longyearbyen on Svalbard archipelago in the Arctic Ocean. He threatened bank personnel with a Mauser rifle and demanded 70,000 kroner ($8,000), the Svalbard Governor’s office said.

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Locals and tourists are allowed to carry weapons on the island due to a huge number of polar bears (over 3,000), whose population surpasses the residents’ community of 2,000.

However, the unlucky robber couldn’t get away with his crime and quickly got arrested.

The criminal probably didn’t take into account that almost everyone in the town knows each other. He also apparently failed to work out potential escape routes – a local airport is the only means of leaving the settlement during the polar night.

The Russian was transported to the town of Tromso on the Norwegian mainland, where he will be questioned. The governor admitted that the remote Arctic archipelago is no longer free from crime.

The bizarre heist was ridiculed online, with people wondering how on Earth the robber had planned to get away.

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