News & Views on the Russian presence within the Arctic Circle
15 February 2010
A number of agencies recently reported the fact that a new class of ice-breaker built by the shipbuilding company Almaz has failed in recent attempts to navigate the Neva River. The Nevsky Gate, unfortunately, was not able to navigate the river up to the Alexander Nevsky Bridge. The ship lacked the capacity to deal with the ‘unique’/'not common’ thickness of ice on the... 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...
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...
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...
15 December 2009
A Russian language source from Germany is describing Russian and German scientific opinion concerning the state of the ice on the Laptev Sea. Apparently, the ice is not showing any obvious signs of stress caused by global warming but scientists are puzzled as to why the east-west drift of the Arctic current, first established by Nansen on the Fram in 1894, is showing signs of speeding... Read More...
25 November 2009
popmechanic.ru reports on the arrival of the Yamal ice-breaker, which was busy over the summer, and its arrival in Murmansk, where it is now docked alongside the Arktica - a legendary ice-breaker from Soviet times. This photograph of the bow of the Yamal published over the summer shows the teeth painted on the front and ‘popmechanic’ reports that this was painted there... Read More...
17 November 2009
Because of the unusual and dangerous nature of Arctic shipping where navigation is difficult, the successful operation of the NSR requires that emergency assistance be available should it be needed. Sakhalife reports on some drills which took place in August and September this year, which were in keeping with or part of Medvedev’s 2020 policy. According to this report the situation... Read More...
16 November 2009
In a rather stark admission, мурманск B-port.com have a short article under the title, ‘Говорить о разработке арктического шельфа пока рано’ – i.e., talk of the development of the Arctic shelf is still too early. The details are interesting. I quote: it is possible to speak of the ”Titanic” effect. ... Read More...
4 November 2009
We have seen this kind of opinion before, embedded deep in the Russian Academy of Sciences and here it is again. This time Institute of Geography RAS Academician Vladimir Kotlyakovo has obtained ice-core data from Mount Erebus which, so the claim is made, shows that (’В прошлом цикл.е, 100 тысяч лет назад, когда никакой промышленности... Read More...
15 October 2009
Many headlines about melting ice in the Arctic don’t offer much detail and the concept of ice-free needs much elaboration. In ежденевый журнал the author makes the excellent point that ice-free transit, completely across the whole of the northern sea route, would only be for a period of 25 days at most creating bottlenecks around somewhere callled the Vilkitski Strait. The... Read More...
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