News & Views on the Russian presence within the Arctic Circle
29 January 2010
The new law currently before the Russian Duma on the Management of Radioactive Waste does not offer sufficient safeguards for the health of human populations according to critics as reported in b-port.com, the regional news-agency from Murmansk. Apparently the law will even allow the importation of nuclear waste into Russia from abroad, which will scarcely assist Russia’s own massive... Read More...
28 January 2010
The boat that I described yesterday as playing a role in the rescue of the Ivan Makarin is back in Vladivostok, so reports vecti.ru. Now this is only indirectly related to the issue of ArcticRussia but the ship was stuck in the ice in back in November while working for the BBC in Antarctica. The interesting fact here is that the ice breaker was stuck for about a week. вести.ru are... Read More...
28 January 2010
In what could only really be described as an amazing bit of news хибины.ru is reporting that Gazprom could be forced to abandon its ambitious plans for the development of the Shtokman field in the Barents Sea. There have been indications before that confidence in the project was shaky and, if these predictions are true, then this would be a massive blow to Russia’s Arctic... Read More...
27 January 2010
The fate of the Smolninskii was widely covered by a large number of news agencies. MIXA.TV has some good and rather scary footage of the kind of conditions that ship was in and many agencies reported that some of the crew were rescued my MI-8 helicopter. вести.ru has photos of the kind of ‘icing’ that led the ship to list, and which threatened to sink it. Eventually... Read More...
26 January 2010
The news reported in gazeta.ru that Norway wants to increase Chinese representation on the Arctic Council adds an interesting twist to understanding that country’s – China’s that is – international ambitions for the Arctic. Chinese interests in the Arctic, as stated in gazeta.ru are purely scientific. The Ambassador of China in Norway, whose address to the conference... Read More...
25 January 2010
… these are the words of poet and RAS scientist Alexander Gorodnitsky in an interview in Novaya Gazeta (St. Petersburg), pointing the finger at Al Gore and carbon traders for making erroneous claims and money. Gorodnitsky refers us instead to the work of geophysicist and Academician Oleg G. Sorokhtin, whose work demonstrates that anthropogenic carbon emissions are around 1%... Read More...
22 January 2010
‘most modern’, ‘ultra-deep’, ‘complex’, ‘innovation’, ‘tremendous’, ‘advanced’, ‘progressive’, ‘Russia’s new economy’, ‘flagship’,’ ‘modernization’ – just a few of the bright and shiny words used in this report by BP in its efforts to persuade the Russian... Read More...
21 January 2010
российская газета reports on a new bill currently before the state duma which aims to provide a unified body and set of laws designed to tackle the problem of Russia’s nuclear waste, much of it a product of activities in the Arctic and located in the Arctic, such as the ‘Плавучая технологическая база (птб) «Лепсе»’ –... Read More...
20 January 2010
‘И российское руководство владеет конфиденциальной информацией о надвигающихся катаклизмах’ …. so goes the statement in an ‘analysis‘ of the EU’s relationship with Russia. Basically, the article is suggesting that a cooling of the Gulf Stream, a weakening of the thermohaline... Read More...
20 January 2010
Many agencies report the flight of two turbo prop Tupolev strategic bombers. I have reported these ’rehearsals’ many times before but readers should be aware that although the aircraft are classed as first strike weapons I personally fail to see how they could ever actually manage this as they are always ‘accompanied’ by NATO aircraft, this time two RAF Tornadoes... Read More...
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