News & Views on the Russian presence within the Arctic Circle
5 May 2010
I came across this comment on my blog, I don’t know exactly where it is from so I thought I ought to try and clarify something of the politics behind my posts. Consider the following: In addition to this post on the role and place of military forces and the interesting debate with Russia’s special representative from the Foreign Ministry, whicht I covered here, these comments in иноСМИ.ru by... Read More...
30 April 2010
According to this report the govenor of the Murmansk region believes that Russia did not make any concessions, though he is contradicted by a former economist and engineer Nikolai Bogdanov who estimates that Russia has had to cede around 9 billion tonnes of oil and who laments the lack of a proper exploration policy and reliance on foreign firms. The Financial Times in the UK uses the metaphor... Read More...
29 April 2010
Whenever Putin does anything related to the Arctic then the internet gets jammed packed with articles and reports. So it is the case with the visit of Putin to Franz-Joseph land where the problems of polar bears and other matters have been discussed under the auspices of the Russian Geographical Society. Videofootage of Putin and the scientists together with a lullaby soundtrack about... Read More...
26 April 2010
In the light of concerns about the relative (declining?) position of the west in the world, such as these expressed in this book by an HSBC economist, I often wonder whether it would be better if western countries couldn’t fix on a more coordinated approach to issues such as Russia’s development of the Arctic region. Medvedev’s visit to Norway to discuss such... Read More...
15 April 2010
радио-голос, which consistently takes a tough line in these matters, reports that the USA is going to use an air-transit route over the North Pole to Afghanistan. This plan does not take into account the interests of Russia, could potentially use Russian air-space and ‘американские транзитные планы идут в разрез с курсом на... Read More...
14 April 2010
This article in независимая, which in my opinion often offers one of the more ‘realist’ approaches to Arctic geopolitics, revisits some old themes. The author claims that during the 20th century, when the USSR claimed much of the Arctic region, up to the north pole, that this did not elicit any combative responses from other countries. Now, however, with the... Read More...
30 March 2010
Many agencies have, of course, reported on the visit of Foreign Minister Lavrov to Canada. For the most part, there were few hints of any disagreement or any clue as to what might have been discussed behind closed doors. There was one issue, however, which did seem to emerge: what is the appropriate forum for discussing Arctic issues? риа-новости contextualised the issues... Read More...
26 March 2010
While TACC reports opinion from within the USA ’s intelligence community that the Arctic will not become another zone of conflict независимое has sought out opinions from Russian politicians about this very issue. Foreign Minister Lavrov, for example, states that attempts to whip up rumours of conflict are unnecessary and counter-productive. Chilingarov argues that... Read More...
24 March 2010
So goes the headline in голос россии referring to the establishment of the Borneo station and a three year expedition starting in June, involving the Academic Federov, the research ship, accompanied by an ice-breaker. Meanwhile in St. Petersburg plans for an airship expedition to the north pole during 2011 were also announced by Chilingarov at the State Institute for Arctic... Read More...
23 March 2010
From these reports we learn that the ship Akademic Federov is being ‘patched’ at a cost of 190 million roubles. Then from this report, from the official website of the United Russia party about the research station Borneo, which is very close to the North Pole, we learn that the research ship is actually being used to determine the boundaries of the Russian continental shelf... Read More...
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