Meanwhile, the German forces in the far north, in Norway, were seeking, in cooperation with the Finns, to contribute to the success of the war against Russia. For the Finns, the aim was the recovery of territory lost to Russia in the winter of 1939-40, when the Russians, as part of their westward expansion in the period of the Russogerman Treaty, made war on Finland. The Germans sought to protect their supplies of nickel from Petsamo in northern Finland and to capture the Murmansk railway which, running from Murmansk on the Arctic Ocean, through Kandalaksha, on the White Sea, to Leningrad, was one of the main routes used to convey the arms and equipment brought by British Arctic convoys.