As Russia Falters in North, China Expands Its Role There to the Despair of Some in Moscow

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Sept. 29 – The end of the third quarter has brought a plethora of stories highlighting two interconnected developments: Moscow’s increasing problems in developing the Northern Sea Route and Beijing’s taking advantage of that to expand its role in northern Russia and across the Arctic more generally.

            Five stories about Russia’s problems are particularly important:

·       First, Moscow’s inability to build enough icebreakers and ice-capable ships has prompted it to send into the NSR ships which are not capable of handling ice, something that observers say is a recipe for disaster (thebarentsobserver.com/news/moscow-pushes-arctic-shipping-towards-disaster/437663).

 

·       Second, in reporting the success of its floating atomic power station, Moscow has unintentionally highlighted its inability to provide power to those places in the far north when that ship is not present (eastrussia.ru/news/patrushev-otsenil-rabotu-plavuchey-atomnoy-teploelektrostantsii-na-chukotke/).

 

·       Third, Moscow is now being forced to try to build new dredging equipment to clear ports and access to the NSR in the north because of declining water levels. Given its inability to come up with enough dredging equipment in the south, rising water levels and silting of ports will make at least some inaccessible to some ships (arctic.ru/infrastructure/20251001/1050975.html).

 

·       Fourth, Moscow announced that it had ended the period this year when it delivers supplies to the far north. Because there are few or even no roads and rail routes there, cities, villages and bases there will have to make do until next spring, not something new but an increasing problem given Putin’s aspirations (arctic.ru/news/20251002/1051243.html).

 

·       And fifth, so many people have fled the Russian North since the end of Soviet times that the Duma has now taken up a bill that will handle the processing of abandoned properties there, yet another indication that all is not well with the development of the North that Putin routinely hypes (arctic.ru/population/20251002/1051183.html).

 

Meanwhile, as Moscow falters, Beijing has been expanding its activities in ways that may help Russia in the short term but that will put China in the driver’s seat there in the future:

·       First, China is working to develop ports at both the eastern and western ends of the NSR, at Provideniye in Chukotka and Murmansk in the West (sibmix.com/?doc=18098 and https://arctic.ru/infrastructure/20250930/1050460.html).

 

·       Second, China is expanding its use of the NSR relative to everyone else including Russia, sending container ships as well as bulk cargo vessels along it (svpressa.ru/science/article/483971/).

 

·       And third, Russian officials are now talking about the NSR not so much as a Russian project but as “an icy silk road,” a not so veiled reference to China’s plans to link itself with Europe not only via Central Asia but via the Arctic as well (thebarentsobserver.com/news/governor-signs-contract-with-chinese-shipper-says-murmansk-can-become-hub-for-icy-silk-road/438199).

 

Most Russian commentaries about these Chinese developments are positive, viewing them as examples of Chinese support for Russia in its conflict with the West. But ever more of them have an alarmist undertone, with a Russian shipping official pointedly saying that Russian ships “must be built in Russia and not in China” (rosbalt.ru/news/2025-09-25/aleksey-gagarinov-suda-nuzhno-stroit-v-rossii-a-ne-v-kitae-5480637).