Author: Arctic Politics

I have not been able to give due attention to this blog during spring (blame Ukraine) but now I want to upgrade it to a proper PRIO blog, with the link to Facebook, certainly. What has caught my attention recently was Putin-chaired roundtable on the safety of Arctic development in St. Petersburg on June 5…. Read more »

When Nezavisimaya gazeta published an article entitled “Arctic – the zone of confrontation”, I paid scant attention assuming that it was just an effort to remind that Ukraine was not everything. But then Putin held the meeting of the Security Council and ordered to set up a super-commission that would supervise all Arctic policies. Nikolai… Read more »

Norwegian newspaper Dagsavisen has published my argument that in the fast-moving escalation of the crisis around Ukraine, Moscow could try to exploit Norwegian sensitivity to the Spitsbergen sovereignty. I certainly do not want to give the policy-makers in the Kremlin ideas, but the pressure point is too obvious to miss. It fits perfectly into the… Read more »

As the “polite green men” were taking control over the Crimea, another unit of Russian paratroopers landed on the Kotelny island, as TASS proudly reported. More extensive coverage of that high-risk exercise is here. An article in Nezavisimaya argued that “penetration of Greenpeaceniks and radical Islamists is a grave threat to the Russian Arctic“. This… Read more »

Rossiiskaya gazeta published a report from a scientific conference where the proposition on global warming and melting of Arctic ice was effectively disproved. The fact that September 2013 ice was by as much as 50% larger than September 2012 ice is indeed under-reported. What is odd about this emphasis, however, is that it goes strictly… Read more »

It is rather unusual for the official news agency to publish an expert opinion that “the Northern Fleet in its current strength cannot perform even elementary tasks on ensuring national security in this vast region“. The volume of assertive statements has much increased after the short cruise of a squadron led by Petr Veliky along… Read more »

Russian officials added emphasis on the “hard security” matters in the Arctic in the end-of-the-year self-congratulations. Nikolai Patrushev, the secretary of the Security Council and a big fan of Far North, asserted that “strategic risks for Russia in the Arctic are increasing“. Vice prime minister Dmitry Rogozin argued that “serious players are engaged in a battle,… Read more »

My last publication of the year 2013 has appeared in The New Times (in Russian), and it examines the rationale for Putin’s course on militarizing the Arctic, while proclaiming commitment to peace and cooperation. The text has suffered from severe cuts, but for once I have no complaints – they have to make room in… Read more »

I have been writing a short review on the book “Environmental and Human Security in the Arctic” (Hoogensen et al, eds, Routledge: 2014), when a news item about President Putin’s address to the FSB personnel in connection with the “Day of Chekists” has caught my eye. Nothing new in the address (it was quite an… Read more »

The conference in Moscow on “The Arctic: Region of Cooperation and Development” organized by the Russian International Affairs Council with IMEMO and CSIS as key partners had a nice venue in the Lotte Hotel and many important quests, including Deputy Foreign Minister Titov and Deputy Secretary of the Security Council Nazarkin (both in the picture)…. Read more »