re: Russia's Arctic Obsession

This is how it's gonna work:
Russia will spend considerable resources and human life trying to make it work. They will progress to certain point - not really an impressive point either - and claim a glorious achievement. More lives will be expended to prove this claim, further diluting the Russian gene pool and population. Rampant vodka consumption will inevitably eat away at whatever it is they've accomplished resulting in a sort of bureaucratic decay Russians have historically perfected. The Russian Artic outpost will devolve into a handful of chain smoking, borscht eating alcoholics who will eventually be abandoned. Their identities will be purged from all public knowledge and the entire episode will be forgotten.
The End