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Spitsbergen is the largest island in the Svalbard archipelago, a Norwegian territory with a special status governed by the 1920 Svalbard Treaty. The treaty establishes that Norway has sovereignty, but all signatory countries (including Russia) can carry out economic activities on the archipelago. For this reason, Russian and Ukrainian settlements exist there, the best known of which is Barentsburg, managed by the mining company Arktikugol (Arctic Coal Company), a Russian state-owned company that has operated coal mines on the island for almost a century.