Russian Fishing Industry Wants Moscow to Denounce 1990 Bering Sea Agreement with the US

 Paul Goble

            Staunton, June 19 – Moscow has never ratified the June 1990 agreement on the maritime boundary in the Bering Sea signed by Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze and US Secretary of State James Baker, but it has acted in accordance with its provisions. Now, some in Russia are urging Putin to denounce the accord as a violation of Russian national interests.

            Many Western journalists are having fun reporting calls among Russians today for having the United States return Alaska to Russia. But it is common ground that Moscow has no chance of achieving that. But in reporting the Alaska stories, these same journalists are missing a story where Moscow may actually be able to get what it wants at the expense of the United States.

            That concerns the future of the agreement on the division of the Bering Sea north of Alaska and the Russian Far East. According to Russian activists, that line represents a betrayal of Russian national interests and must be denounced (realtribune.ru/liniya-predatelstva-shevardnadze-rossii-pora-vernut-u-ssha-svoju-chast-beringova-morya).

            Among those making this argument is Vyacheslav Zilanov, a leader of the Russian fishing industry, who says that this line is working against Russian fishing because it cedes far too much of the Arctic Ocean to the Americans and is currently costing Russia millions of dollars in income.

            The line of delimitation established in 1990, he continues, extends for 5289 kilometers, “the longest” such line between neighboring states in the world and one that gives the Americans far more uncontested shipping area than the usual 200 kilometers economic exclusion zone extending from US coasts.

            Many Russian officials, including Yevgeny Primakov, criticized the accord at the time; and it is significant, Zilanov says, that neither Shevardnadze who signed it nor Gorbachev who backed it mentioned the agreement in their memoirs, likely because they too were ashamed of the concessions they had made.

            Because of such domestic opposition and embarrassment, the Russian Federation has never ratified the agreement, he suggests. But now is the time to do more. Moscow should denounce it rather than continue to live by inertia according to its provisions.

            That would be consistent with Vladimir Putin’s focus on the Arctic and also represent a powerful riposte to efforts to exclude Moscow from Arctic discussions as has happened in the case of the Arctic Council in recent months. Such arguments make it likely that the Kremlin may follow Zilanov’s advice and will soon threaten to denounce the accord if not in fact do so.