Arctic Russia

norway and russia – a tougher stance

Many agencies are reporting and commentating on the visit of the Norwegian Foreign Minister to Moscow.  Although the talks were wide ranging, they seemed to be focussed on the tricky issue of the delineation of the maritime boundary in the Barents Sea.  Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov answered questions about the Shtokman project and maintained that these issues were purely commerical.  However, he also stressed that cooperation between the two countries was not limited to the Shtokman project, in a way admitting that a lot of this is driven at the political level, and also implying that Sktokman would not de-rail longer term thinking.   

More interesting than the official government site above, however, is the commentary.

Newsland.ru emphasized the geopolitical dimension of the talks, the fact that, ‘И здесь нельзя не отметить, что Норвегия – это член НАТО’ – i.e., that Norway is a member of NATO.  The author argues that Norway is slightly on the defensive, ‘Может быть, в Норвегии считают, что по мере укрепления России шансы решить вопрос в свою пользу улетучиваются, вот и решили поторопиться’ – i.e., that, ‘it may be that Norway understands that, in so far as Russia is strengthening, then the chances of a resolution of the question in its favour are weakening, and thus it has decided to resolve things in a hurry.’  The author also clearly adopts a pro Russian position in that he/she claims that Russia has already given many geopolitical gifts to other countries and has received in return nothing – ‘ Россия и так уже сделала другим странам столько геополитических «подарков», что дальше некуда, но заметных дивидендов нам это не принесло’ – I can’t say I have noticed these any of these gifts myself. 

There are also predictions that Russia will take a ‘more severe position’ – ‘более жесткую позицию’, a tougher stance – in the future on this issue. 

Rosinvest indicates why it might be that Russia has the upper hand – its simple, the Norwegians are running out of oil and gas.

With Medvedev coming to Oslo soon it would appear as though the Norwegians have a lot to look forward to.