Moscow’s Closure of ‘Peanut Hole’ in Sea of Okhotsk Suggests How Russia will Use Recognition of its Claims to Shelf Area in Arctic

Paul Goble

            Staunton, June 1 – Moscow continues to press for international recognition of its expansive claims to a large portion of the Arctic Ocean as part of its economic exclusion zone because it says that the seabed under it is part of Russia’s continental shelf. Just how far Moscow might go if it gets its way is shown by its handling of the situation in the Sea of Okhotsk.

            That enormous sea which lies between continental Russia and the Kamchatka peninsula is so large that a central portion of it is beyond the 200 nautical mile exclusion zone that is now standard in international law. In Soviet times, few foreign ships entered what became known as “the peanut hole;” but after 1991, many did; and Moscow took action to block their access.

            Moscow was outraged because it saw the economic activities of foreign countries as being the advance party of navies hostile to Russia and launched a major diplomatic effort to change how international law treated the Sea of Okhotsk from being about coastal exclusion zones to being based on the continental shelf.

            In 2013, Moscow secured UN recognition for the latter principle and thereby excluded Western shipping. (On this effort and its results, see ixbt.com/live/offtopic/gde-u-rossii-byla-arahisovaya-dyra-i-kak-ona-ot-nee-izbavilas.html and versia.ru/dejstviya-rossii-na-mezhdunarodnoj-arene-pozvolili-ej-soxranit-kontrol-nad-bioresursami-oxotskogo-morya).

            Although the Arctic case is somewhat different – most of that ocean is not enclosed by Russian territory on two or three sides – what Moscow did with regard to the Sea of Okhotsk a decade ago is likely an indication of how it will deal with any international declaration of the continental shelf in the Arctic as belonging to Russia.

            That makes negotiations on this latter issue at the United Nations even more important than they have appeared up to now because if Moscow achieves its goals there, it will undoubtedly make equally expansive claims of the right to exclude others on the basis of any finding that the seabed under the Arctic belongs to it.