Zapadnaya Litsa Naval Base (Basis Nord)

Zapadnaya Litsa is a naval base of the Russian Navy on the Kola Peninsula in Murmansk Oblast, northern Russia. It lies within the Litsa Fjord at the westernmost point of the peninsula, roughly 120 kilometres from Murmansk and 45 kilometres from the Norwegian border. The base is garrisoned by the Northern Fleet and supports its nuclear submarine forces.

The installation is not a single site but a group of four separate naval facilities distributed around the fjord: Malaya Lopatka, Andreyeva Bay, Bolshaya Lopatka and Nerpichya. Malaya Lopatka was the first of these to be built and was the home port of K-3 Leninsky Komsomol, the first Soviet nuclear submarine. Andreyeva Bay is associated with the storage of spent nuclear fuel and radioactive waste, and radioactive waste deposits across the wider Zapadnaya Litsa area remain an environmental concern. The closed town of Zaozyorsk, established in 1958 as Zaozyorny and known under several cover names, adjoins the base and houses its personnel.

Operating conditions are severe: changeable temperatures, strong winds, rocky and swampy terrain, and a polar night of about 43 days in winter.

The site was first developed as a naval base in 1939, when it was made available to Nazi Germany under the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact as the anchorage Basis Nord; the German occupation of Norway the following year removed the requirement for it. The area then saw little use until the late 1950s, when the Soviet Union rebuilt it to accommodate the newly formed nuclear submarine programme of the Soviet Navy, producing the multi-facility base in use today.