Moscow Must Reverse Recent Declines in Spending on Arctic Exploration, Kazanin Says

 Paul Goble

    Staunton, Mar. 7 --  Over the last several years, likely a euphemism for "since Putin began his expanded war in Ukraine," Moscow has cut back in its exploration of the Arctic despite Russia's need for oil, gas and other minerals from the sea's floor and its strategic plans to project Russian power there, according to Aleksey Kazanin.

    In a Nezavisimaya gazeta article,  the general director of the Marine Arctic Geopolitical Exploration Expedition says that a proposed plan to reverse this trend is now before the Russian government and must be approved rather than allowing anyone to believe that everything can be put off until the next generation (ng.ru/vision/2025-03-07/100_1255070325.html).

    There are three reasons, Kazanin says, why this program of restored financing must be approved. First, Russia needs the oil and gas that can now be recovered from the Arctic because of recent improvements in technology. Second, it needs to take such steps to support the development of the critical Northern Sea Route.

    And third -- and this may be the most important signal his article sends -- Moscow eeds to "strengthen the evidence behind the Russian Federation's submission to the UN Commission on the Limits of hte Continental Shelf in the Arctic Ocean. (For background on that effort, see windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2023/02/un-clcs-accepts-russias-documentation.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2023/12/us-expands-arctic-shelf-claims-likely.html and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/08/newly-elevated-naval-collegium-to.html.)

     That issue is likely to come to the forefront because, despite the warming of US-Russian relations generally under President Trump, the current US president has made clear that he has expansive plans for the Arctic, plans that put both him and the US on a collision course with Moscow which has even more expansive ones.