Moscow Planning to Build Dredging Fleet to Support Northern Sea Route But Likely to Have to Turn to China for Help as It has on the Caspian and the Volga

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Aug. 7 – Global warming and expanded human use have forced Moscow to turn to China and Iran for help in dredging portions of the Caspian and major Russian rivers, but now officials say it will build its own “fleet of dredging vessels” to clear portions of the Northern Sea Route and access to ports in the Russian North adjoining it.

            Russia does not now have such ships; and they will have to be either ice-capable or escorted by icebreakers, making this an enormous and expensive task especially given all the problems Russian ship building in general now has, a situation that may force Moscow to turn to China once again.

            But despite that prospect, Yury Trutnyev, the presidential plenipotentiary for the Far Eastern FD and point man for Moscow’s policies on the NSR, says that Moscow is planning to create its own national “dredging fleet” and that Putin will be signing off on that soon  (prochukotku.ru/news/ofitsialno/dnouglubitelnyy_flot_sozdadut_dlya_raboty_na_severnom_morskom_puti/).

            The task Moscow faces both with regard to the need to dredge along the Northern Sea Route is enormous and was outlined by Rosatom earlier this year. It said that the amount of deposits needed to be dredged and removed will reach 60 million cubic meters over the next five years (en.portnews.ru/news/385647/).

            Rosatom at the time acknowledged that Russia doesn’t have the domestic capacity to handle such an amount, making it likely that Moscow will once again turn to China and that China will thus gain more leverage over Russian policy in the north as siltification increases (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2025/10/as-russia-falters-in-north-china.html).