Russia's Arctic Obsession

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For centuries, the Arctic has had special significance for Russia – as a new frontier for explorers, a source of riches from furs to oil to gold, and a security buffer for a nation that frequently feared encirclement.

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President Vladimir Putin has strongly backed such ambitions. “States and private companies that choose the Arctic trade routes will undoubtedly reap economic advantages,” he told a conference on Arctic issues in 2011. His government has set up a Northern Sea Route Administration to regulate foreign shipping traffic through Russian Arctic waters. In the past few years, Moscow has also resurrected search and rescue posts and made plans to repair and expand Arctic ports along the coast. Many of these hopes hinge on the idea that some of the goods manufactured in China and bound for European markets could be transported via the Arctic. Russia’s far north contains massive natural resources, which could also be exported both east and west on this route. For example, the US Geological Survey has estimated that 70 per cent of the world’s undiscovered natural gas – some 44 billion barrels of natural gas liquids – lies in the Arctic, most of that in Russia. Cargo transports between Europe and Asia via the NSR had stopped after 1997. But beginning in 2009, a few German, Scandinavian, Chinese and Korean shipping companies started experimenting with transits.

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The idea of mastering nature is very much part of Russian identity, as is the myth of conquering the Arctic, despite the decline of Moscow’s footprint in the far north over the past 25 years. In July, Alexander Prokhanov, a nationalist ideologue, published an essay glorifying the Arctic as a fundamental element of Russian greatness and a force of national reinvigoration. He issued a rallying cry for the Russian people to exploit its natural resource riches and added: “We will also draw on another resource precious to the Russian people – the passion, inspired daydreaming, powerful will and invincible confidence that in all ages have made the Russians a great, undefeated nation.”

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