A remarkably bizzare twist to the Arctic tale: My good friend Sergei Medvedev posted a comment to a blog post, in which he argued that Soviet and Russian “conquest” of the Arctic had inflicted so much damage to the environment that all economic activity in the High North should be banned and a UN monitoring… Read more »

Russian media is full of accounts of the “show pre-trial” on the Greenpeace activists, like for instance this article in Novaya gazeta. Lenta.ru is providing great newstream, particularly since Litvinov works for them; while Nezavisimaya gazeta tries to rationalize the demonstrative harshness. The point in Vedomosti that a “clash of civilizations” may be present in… Read more »

Gazprom was certainly better prepared this year to counter the Greenpeace action against the Prirazlomnaya platform in the Pechora sea – but this is the case of better preparedness making things much worse. The border guard ship (in the picture from the Greenpeace website) had to fire on the Arctic Sunrise in order to prevent… Read more »

Interesting news about Putin’s plans for militarizing the Arctic: Holding a phone conference with the top brass on September 16, the CinC instructed the commander of the Northern Fleet to rebuild the base on the Novosibirsk islands abandoned in 1993. The battle group led by Petr Velikii held exercises in this area, including a marine… Read more »

President Putin made a good point on the Arctic at the G20 press-conference: “I should say that we will not allow companies to proceed with their projects before they undergo a thorough environmental impact assessment. It is unacceptable to do otherwise, especially in the Far North where the natural environment is especially vulnerable”. The problem… Read more »

Very good issue of the World Today (produced by the Chatham House) on the arctic matters. And what makes it particularly noteworthy, is my article, certainly, which was also re-printed in Moscow Times. “Putin’s blurred Arctic vision” is the title – not my choice of words, but I can go with that.

I use this old picture of Soviet polar activities to illustrate a really important news: Greenpeace has proceeded with its work and its ice-breaker Arctic Sunrise has entered the Kara Sea despite receiving no permission from the Sevmorput administration. Russian media reports laconically on this enterprise, but much more can be found on the Greenpeace… Read more »

The Northern Fleet Naval Aviation exercises in the Barents Sea have the traditional agenda of hunting for “hostile” submarines. They may have an additional goal of making an impression on Koji Sekimizu, Secretary-General of the International Maritime Organization, who is taking a ride of the 50 Let Pobedy nuclear icebreaker in order to inspect the safety… Read more »

On this day thirteen years ago we still believed that some sailors on board the Kursk were alive…

The Arctic ice is about to hit a new historic low this month, and Rossiiskaya gazeta has proudly reported that nuclear ice-breaker 50 Let Pobedy made a voyage to the North Pole, which happened to be the 100th visit by a ship to this symbolic spot. What the newspaper is somewhat shy about is that… Read more »