Faroe Islands have renewed a fishing quota deal with Russia for one year despite Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine

Denmark’s autonomous Faroe Islands have renewed a fishing quota deal with Russia for one year despite Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, a local minister said on Saturday.

Home to some 54,000 inhabitants, the Faroe Islands have been largely autonomous from Denmark since 1948.

“The Faroe Islands are totally right to extend their existing fishing agreement with Russia,” the North Atlantic archipelago’s minister of fisheries Arni Skaale told the Jyllands-Posten daily.

He added however that the islands, which are not part of the European Union, condemned “all form of war - also the war in Ukraine” after Russian forces invaded in February.

The agreement has been in place since 1977 and is renewable each year.

It lays out catch quotas for cod, haddock, whiting and herring in the Barents Sea north of Russia for Faroese fishermen, and in waters off the coast of the Faroe Islands for Russian fishing boats.

The autonomous territory is highly dependent on fishing for its income, and the fisheries ministry says the deal with Russia covers 5 percent of its GDP, Qazet.az reports according to AFP reports.